Quotes on Creativity

I have been gradually putting together life stories - essays over the past five or so years; part as 'venting' part as committing to writing my own recollections of things that I think are worth saving. I've noticed lately that the successful ones require my own personal touch otherwise they come out dry and factual. So I got to thinking about creativity and stumbled on some favorite creativity quotes:

Publications International, Ltd., the Editors of. "17 Favorite Quotes on Creativity." 20 September 2007. HowStuffWorks.com. 17 July 2008.

Take a look at what some famous folks throughout history have said about creativity.

1. "The chief enemy of creativity is good taste."
-- Pablo Picasso, painter

Albert Einstein was one of the most creative minds in science.

2. "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-- Albert Einstein, physicist

3. "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
-- Scott Adams, cartoonist

4. "Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity."
-- Edwin H. Land, scientist and inventor

5. "Necessity is the mother of invention, it is true, but its father is creativity, and knowledge is the midwife."
-- Jonathan Schattke, scientist

6. "The whole difference between construction and creation is this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists."
-- Charles Dickens, author

7. "Creativity is a drug I can't do without."
-- Cecil B. DeMille, film producer

8. "It is wise to learn; it is God-like to create."
-- John Saxe, poet

9. "Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an afterlife."
-- Arianna Huffington, author and pundit

10. "True creativity often starts where language ends."
-- Arthur Koestler, novelist and essayist

11. "The art of creation is older than the art of killing."
-- Andrei Voznesensky, poet

12. "Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights activist

13. "The life of the creative man is led, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes."
-- Saul Steinberg, artist

14. "No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive."
-- John Cassavetes, actor

15. "A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something."
-- Frank Capra, American film director

16. "There is a correlation between the creative and the screwball. So we must suffer the screwball gladly."
-- Kingman Brewster, American diplomat, former president of Yale University

17. "Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training."
-- Anna Freud, founder of child psychoanalysis

So with these ideas in my back pocket, stay tuned for an essay on rites of passage.