A curated list of creativity quotes from renowned thinkers and leaders to help spark new ideas and drive breakthrough results!
Whether you’re an entrepreneur seeking fresh perspectives, a team leader aiming to inspire, or simply looking to ignite your personal ingenuity, the following creativity quotes – curated from visionaries, artists, and business titans – should prove to be a great asset on your journey toward driving real-world impact!
(by Jonathan M. Pham)
Short Creativity Quotes
- Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought. – Albert Einstein
- Creativity is intelligence having fun. – Albert Einstein
- Creativity takes courage. – Henri Matisse
- If you’re alive, you’re a creative person. – Elizabeth Gilbert
- There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period. – Brene Brown
Short quotes about creativity
Inspiring Creativity Quotes
- There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns. – Edward de Bono
- Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun. – Mary Lou Cook
- You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. – Maya Angelou
- There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people. – G. K. Chesterton
- When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts. – Larry Ellison
Motivational quotes about creativity
Curiosity and Creativity Quotes
- Each of man’s advances was started by a question. Knowing what questions to ask and how to ask them is sometimes more important than the eventual answers. – John E. Arnold
- In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few. – Shunryu Suzuki
- Out of curiosity comes everything. – Steve Jobs
- Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. – Albert Einstein
- A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind. – Antoine de Saint‑Exupéry
Read more: 65 Curiosity Quotes – Ignite the Mind & Drive Success
Quotes about creativity and imagination
Quotes about Creativity and Passion
- If something comes naturally and quickly and it consistently produces good work, that’s your gift. – Joe Holder
- Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something then you’re more willing to take risks. – Yo-Yo Ma
- Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm. – Earl Nightingale
- An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. – Edwin Land
- Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. – William Wordsworth
Read more: 65 Entrepreneur Quotes – Wisdom to Launch & Lead
Quotes about creativity and inspiration
Quotes on Talent and Creativity
- It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked two years but will be soon out of date. – Roger Von Oech
- Nothing is so embarrassing as watching someone do something that you said could not be done. – Sam Ewing
- If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong. – Charles Kettering
- Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them. – Alfred North Whitehead
- The best way to predict the future is to invent it. – Alan Kay
Read more: 60 Talent Quotes – Inspire, Develop, and Lead
Creative phrases
Quotes about Creativity and Simplicity
- Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. – Pablo Picasso
- Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. – Albert Einstein
- The fewer decisions you have to make, the better. Because then you can use that space for creativity itself. – Hildur Guðnadóttir
- Written reports stifle creativity. – Ross Perot
- It is always the simple that produces the marvelous. – Amelia Barr
Beautiful words for creativity
Quotes about Creativity and Love
- Trust your instincts and take risks, even if it means going … freestyling—cooking from passion and intuition. – Calvin Eng
- Creativity flows from the heart, not from perfection. – Unknown
- Craft is what we are expected to know; art is the unexpected use of our craft. – Ed Catmull
- To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty. – Osho
- All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now. – Rick Rubin
Read more: 40 Empathy Quotes – Cultivating Connection for Success
Quotes about Creativity and Mental Health
- We are coming up with cool stuff all the time, but when your brain is going fast and you’re doing tasks and you’re ticking things off your to-do list, you will never be able to hear your innovative ideas. – Kirsty Hulse
- Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. – Pablo Picasso
- Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. – Thomas Merton
- Walking somehow lubricates a mind that has seized up, and produces lots of good ideas. – Michael Pollan
- The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. – Sylvia Plath
Read more: 45 Workplace Wellness Quotes – Beyond the Paycheck
Creativity quotes by women
Quotes for Creativity and Innovation
- Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. – William Pollard
- Innovation is the creation of the new, or the re-arranging of the old in a new way. – Mike Vance
- Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation. – Mason Cooley
- Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. – Brene Brown
- Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things. – Theodore Levitt
Read more: 57 Change Management Quotes – Wisdom for Leaders & Changemakers
Spirit of innovation quotes
Quotes about Creativity and Hard Work
- Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. – Pablo Picasso
- You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. – Jack London
- Innovation – any new idea – by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience. – Warren G. Bennis
- Don’t wait for things to be perfect before you share them with others. Show early and show often. It’ll be pretty when we get there, but it won’t be pretty along the way. – Ed Catmull
- Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye. – Dorothy Parker
Unique creative mind quotes
Self Creativity Quotes
- There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. – Martha Graham
- In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone. – Rollo May
- The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible. – David M. Ogilvy
- If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. – Albert Einstein
- In terms of priority, inspiration comes first. You come next. The audience comes last. – Rick Rubin
Quotes about Creativity in Business
- Business isn’t some disembodied bloodless enterprise. Profit is fine – a sign that the customer honors the value of what we do. But ‘enterprise’ ( a lovely word ) is about heart. About beauty. It’s about art. About people throwing themselves on the line. It’s about passion and the selfless pursuit of an ideal. – Tom Peters
- The heart and soul of the company is creativity and innovation. – Bob Iger
- Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. – Steve Jobs
- Creativity is one of the last remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition. – Ed McCabe
- A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts. – Richard Branson
Read more: 60 Business Strategy Quotes – From Planning to Profit
Business innovation quotes
Creativity and Vision Quotes
- Vision is the art of seeing the invisible. – Jonathan Swift
- The best way to predict the future is to create it. – Peter Drucker
- Everything in the world remains to be done or done over. The greatest picture is not yet painted, the greatest play isn’t written, the greatest poem is unsung. – Lincoln Steffens
- Swipe from the best, then adapt. – Tom Peters
- When all think alike, then no one is thinking. – Walter Lippmann
Design Thinking Quotes
- The ‘Design Thinking’ label is not a myth. It is a description of the application of well-tried design process to new challenges and opportunities, used by people from both design and non-design backgrounds. – Bill Moggridge
- The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you’re trying to design for. – David M. Kelley
- For a design thinker it has to be ‘us with them’. – Tim Brown
- By integrating what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable, designers have been able to create the products we enjoy today. – Tim Brown
- Whenever you have no blueprint to tell you in detail what to do, you must work artfully. – Robert D. Austin & Lee Devin
Read more: 55 Growth Mindset Quotes – Insights for Business & Life
Creative Leadership Quotes
- The most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’ – Grace Hopper
- Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. – Steve Jobs
- Learning and innovation go hand in hand. – William Pollard
- The speed of the boss is the speed of the team. – Lee Iacocca
- The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it’s to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued. – Ken Robinson
Read more: 110 Leadership Quotes – Daily Doses of Inspiration to Unlock Greatness
Other resources you might be interested in:
- 50 Essential Emotional Intelligence Quotes for Success
- 60 Learning and Development Quotes to Fuel Growth
- 45 Quotes About Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI)
- 50 Feedback Quotes: Insights From Business Leaders
- 55 Company Culture Quotes: Building a Great Workplace
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