January - creativity

1  “I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity, is daring to dare.” -- Maya Angelou

2. "If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever be done."  -- Ludwig Wittgenstein

3 “A creative person need only be awake.

To be awake and creative is to be self-aware. A creative person is not easily bought or sold. They share themselves, their ‘juice’, their truth, vision and aliveness. They share their love.

Anything that is done creatively becomes sacred – it becomes an act of worship and a source of grace.

-- Jessica Davidson

4  “You can't use up creativity. The more you use it, the more you have.” 

- Maya Angelou

5 "A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. 

Living in this manner—continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you—is a fine art, in and of itself." 

- Elizabeth Gilbert

6 "Birds sing, wolves howl, crickets chirp. But why? Money? Fame? Record contracts? Endorsements? What's it all for? They do it because they're alive. They do it because life is about making things."
- Danny Gregory

7 "All creativity awakens at this primal threshold where light and darkness test and bless each other."

- John O'Donohue

8 "Ambiguity is the warp of life, not something to be eliminated."  

- Mary Catherine Bateson

9 ” All the things that make life rich are contained in the creative process."

 - Andrew Huberman

10 "Beauty appears when something is completely and absolutely and openly itself."   

  - Deena Metzger

11 "A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something. "  

- Frank Capra  

12 "Creativity thrives on the new, the unexpected. It springs forth like a bud in April when the eyes encounter what they have not seen, when the path winds through woods one has never known." 

-- Jan Phillips

13 "Curiosity cracks open the world’s door and allows in new possibilities."  -- Joyce Wycoff

Bonus: “Creativity. You don't grasp creativity. Creativity grasps you, if you're brave enough to let it." -- Tom Asacker 

From Creativity: How to embrace the transformative and distinctly human essence of creativity, part of an online course in “How to Be Alive.”

14 "Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought. -- Albert Szent-Gyorgi   

15 "Go out and  find or do interesting things to provide yourself context for writing." 

- Tim Ferris

16 "Great ideas, it is said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations a faint flutter of wings; the gentle stirring of life and hope."   

- Albert Camus

17 "I am going to spend as much time as I can creating delightful things out of my existence, because that’s what brings me awake and that’s what brings me alive." 

- Elizabeth Gilbert

18 "I conclude that there is as much sense in nonsense as there is nonsense in sense.”

- Anthony Burgess

19 "I am in awe of the human spirit. We are such amazing beings. Filled with light. With possibility. Hope. Creativity. Joy. Love."

- M. L. Gallagher

20 "Ideas are like rabbits.  You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."   

- John Steinbeck

21 "Each of us is here to express our potential, manifest that something that's unique to us." 

-- Jan Phillips

22 "If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever be done."  - Ludwig Wittgenstein

23 "I don't think necessity is the mother of invention.  Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness.  To save oneself trouble."       

 - Agatha Christie

24 "If you need 10 of something, make 30. Then pick the best." 

- Rick Rubin

25 "Feared, creativity atrophies.

Distrusted, it shrivels.

Refused, it slinks away." 

 - Deena Metzger

26 "If at first the idea is not absurd, 

then there is no hope for it.”  

- Albert Einstein

27 "I firmly believe that all human beings 

have access to extraordinary energies and powers. 

Judging from accounts of mystical experience, 

heightened creativity, or exceptional performance 

by athletes and artists, 

we harbor a greater life than we know." 

- Jean Houston

28 "My most creative work 

seems to be on projects where I

'm inexperienced and 

uniquely unqualified for the job."           

- Paula Sher

29 "Everything you can imagine is real." 

- Pablo Picasso 

30 "Ideas are like tea bags ...
they need to steep
to let the flavor develop."
- Joyce Wycoff

31 "If you want to build a ship, 

then don't drum up men to gather wood, 

give orders, and divide the work.  

Rather, teach them to yearn f

or the far and endless sea."    

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery