Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

—Colette

The greatest inspiration is often born of desperation.

—Comer Cotrell

You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life. This is not an easy struggle. Indeed, it may be the most difficult task in the world, for opening

—Daisaku Ikeda

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

—Douglas Adams

Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm

—Earl Nightingale

Creativity
is discontent
translated into arts

—Eric Hoffer

I have not worked at all...Nothing seems worth putting down-I seem to have nothing to say-It appalls me but that is the way it is.

—Georgia O'Keeffe

Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs

—John F Kennedy

The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation

—John Larson
“Rent”

Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better

—John Updike

In the creative act there is an upward surge from some unknown, fertile, underground layers of the mind.

—Koestler

An essential characteristic of the creative state is that one’s critical faculty which normally inhibits all new ideas is completely switched off. Thus ideas are born, many of which will be killed when the critical faculty is switched on again, but others can be followed up by further ideas which meet the criticisms if one is still in the creative state.

—Meredith Thring,
How to Invent

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

—Oscar Wilde

Taste
is the enemy
of creativeness.

—Pablo Picasso

When you work only for yourself, or for your own personal gain, your mind will seldom rise above the limitations of an undeveloped personal life. But when you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break your bonds: your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.

—Patanjali

If people will sit down at their typewriters every morning and begin to word associate every single morning, it will bring all this stuff up.

—Ray Bradbury

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning

—Salvador Dali

There is a fountain of youth: It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring in your life and the lives of people you love

—Sophia Loren

There's room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there is isn't.

—Tori Amos