Top 50 Creativity Quotes (2023 Update)

1. “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

— Scott Adams

2. “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

— Albert Einstein

3. “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

— Sylvia Plath

4. “Creativity is just connecting things.”

— Steve Jobs

5. “Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

— Albert Einstein

6. “You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood. What mood is that? Last-minute panic.”

— Bill Watterson

7. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

— Maya Angelou

8. “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”

— Erich Fromm

Also featured in: Courage Quotes, Spiritual Quotes, Letting Go Quotes

9. “Everything begins with an idea.”

— Earl Nightingale

Also featured in: Quotes About Ideas

10. “Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.”

— Ray Bradbury

11. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”

— Brené Brown

12. “Creativity takes courage. ”

— Henri Matisse

13. “Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.”

— Osho

14. “Failure is success in progress.”

— Albert Einstein

Also featured in: Progress Quotes

15. “The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”

— Pablo Picasso

16. “And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

— Sylvia Plath

17. “What keeps life fascinating is the constant creativity of the soul.”

— Deepak Chopra

18. “Creativity is an act of defiance.”

— Twyla Tharp

19. “There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.”

— Brené Brown

Also featured in: Innovation Quotes

20. “The magic, the wonder, the mystery and the innocence of a child’s heart are the seeds of creativity that will heal the world.”

— Michael Jackson

Also featured in: Quotes About Children, Quotes About Heart

21. “Learning gives creativity. Creativity leads to thinking. Thinking provides knowledge. Knowledge makes you great.”

— Abdul Kalam

22. “Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.”

— Dorothy Parker

23. “Creativity springs from the yearning to be the fullness of who you are.”

— Ram Dass

24. “I do not seek. I find.”

— Pablo Picasso

25. “I have this mental sickness called creativity.”

— Philippe Starck

26. “Instead of competing, all we have to do is create.”

— Earl Nightingale

27. “The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”

— David Ogilvy

Also featured in: Humor Quotes

28. “Creativity has much to do with experience, observation and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn’t work.”

— Bob Dylan

Also featured in: Imagination Quotes

29. “The secret of unleashing your true power is setting goals that are exciting enough that they truly inspire your creativity and ignite yourpassion.”

— Tony Robbins

30. “To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.”

— Truman Capote

31. “There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

32. “Classes will dull your mind, destroy the potential for authentic creativity.”

— John Forbes Nash

33. “An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.”

— Charles Dickens

34. “The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”

— Charles Dickens

35. “Gratitude in advance is the most powerful creative force in the universe.”

— Neale Donald Walsch

Also featured in: Gratitude Quotes

36. “If you gave your inner genius as much credence as your inner critic, you would be light years ahead of where you now stand.”

— Alan Cohen

37. “Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.”

— T. S. Eliot

Also featured in: Anxiety Quotes

38. “It’s better to dance than to march through life.”

— Yoko Ono

39. “There is a time and a place for creativity.”

— William Redington Hewlett

40. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

Also featured in: Fear Quotes

41. “Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.”

— Edward De Bono

Also featured in: Humor Quotes

42. “I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”

— William Blake

Also featured in: Art Quotes

43. “If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.”

— Eckhart Tolle

44. “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”

— Ansel Adams

45. “The road to enlightenment is paved with authenticity, not imitation.”

— Alan Cohen

46. “Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali.”

— Salvador Dalí

Also featured in: Art Quotes

47. “Experiencing sadness and anger can make you feel more creative, and by being creative, you can get beyond your pain or negativity.”

— Yoko Ono

Also featured in: Sadness Quotes

48. “And that’s what innocence is. It’s simple and trusting like a child, not judgmental and committed to one narrow point of view. If you are locked into a pattern of thinking and responding, your creativity gets blocked. You miss the freshness and magic of the moment. Learn to be innocent again, and that freshness never fades.”

— Michael Jackson

49. “I love reading about history. Sometimes, I feel I was born in the wrong era. There was more creativity in the air when people were still discovering new worlds.”

— Shakira

Also featured in: Reading Quotes

50. “I call the age we are entering the creative age because the key factor propelling us forward is the rise of creativity as the primary mover of our economy.”

— Richard Florida

Also featured in: Creative Quotes