This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"In a closed system of energy based on fear and lack, abundance in one place creates lack in another. In an open system of energy, based on faith and love, abundance begets more abundance, and creativity flourishes." - Joan Borysenko
"Creativity requires the freedom to consider "unthinkable" alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices. Every organization, every society is under the spell of assumptions so familiar that they are never questioned, least of all by those most intimately involved." - John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner
"When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: “Only stand out of my light.” Perhaps some day we shall know ho to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light." - John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner
"Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless." - Julia Cameron
"Creativity requires faith... creativity requires receptivity and profound trust." - Julia Cameron
"Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness." - Julia Cameron
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." - Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
"As you are able to give energy to your passion, purpose will emerge. Clarity of purpose comes from honoring what gives your life meaning. Work has become devoid of meaning because people are asked to follow instructions rather than their creativity. True work is an expression of following our inner voice, heeding the spiritual call, and living your passion." - Michael Toms and Justine Willis Toms
"Creativity is... seeing something that doesn't exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God." - Michele Shea
"Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity." - Nadine Gordimer
"Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence." - Norman B. Podhoretz
"“Every morning of the world I give thanks for all the wonderful things in my life,” declared a young man enthusiastically. “And do you know something? It’s strange indeed, but the more I give thanks, the more I have reason to be thankful. For, you see, blessings just pile up on me one after another like nobody’s business”... The more you practice the art of thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for... The attitude of gratitude revitalizes the entire mental process by activating all other attitudes, thus stimulating creativity... Remember that praise and thanksgiving are the most powerful prayers of all." - Norman Vincent Peale
"Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don't let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity." - R. I. Fitzhenry, fully Robert I. Fitzhenry
"Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work." - Rita Mae Brown
"The lash may force men to physical labor; it cannot force them to spiritual creativity." - Sholem Asch, born Szalom Asz, also written Shalom Asch
"When one’s mind is religiously awakened, one feels as though in every blade of wild fern and solid stone there is something really transcending all human feelings, something which lifts one to be a real equal to that of heaven. He plunges himself into the very source of creativity and there drinks from life all that life has to give. He not only sees by taking a look, but he enters into the source of things and knows them at the point where life receives its existence." - Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi
"Religion in the deepest sense takes shape as we learn through pain and loss that the creativity we exercise over our lives is finite, a mere participation in a greater creative act." - Thomas Moore
"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 after-life." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
"It is in the space between inner and outer world, which is also the space between people--the transitional space--that intimate relationships and creativity occur." - D. W. Winicott, fully Donald Woods Winnicott
"Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm. " - Earl Nightingale
"Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting." - Edward de Bono
"We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience. " - Edward de Bono
"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail." - Edwin Herbert Land
"I believe that the fundamental alternative for man is the choice between "life" and "death"; between creativity and destructive violence; between reality and illusions; between objectivity and intolerance; between brotherhood-independence and dominance-submission." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all. " - Erica Mann Jong
"Wildness we might consider as the root of the authentic spontaneities of any being. It is that wellspring of creativity whence comes the instinctive activities that enable all living beings to obtain their food, to find shelter, to bring forth their young: to sing and dance and fly through the air and swim through the depths of the sea. This is the same inner tendency that evokes the insight of the poet, the skill of the artist and the power of the shaman." -
"The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense." - George Lois
"Another word for creativity is courage." - George Lois
"While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness. " - Gilda Radner, fully Gilda Susan Radner
"The world leaders in innovation and creativity will also be world leaders in everything else." - Harold R. McAlindon
"When ambition enters, creativity disappears -- because an ambitious man cannot be creative, because an ambitious man cannot love any activity for its own sake. While he is painting he is looking ahead; he is thinking, 'When am I going to get a Nobel Prize?' When he is writing a novel, he is looking ahead. He is always in the future -- and a creative person is always in the present." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"Creativity has nothing to do with any activity in particular -- with painting, poetry, dancing, singing. It has nothing to do with anything in particular. Anything can be creative -- you bring that quality to the activity. Activity itself is neither creative nor uncreative. You can paint in an uncreative way. You can sing in an uncreative way. You can clean the floor in a creative way. You can cook in a creative way. Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach -- how you look at things." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"Poetic experience is distinct in nature from mystical experience. Because poetry emanates from the free creativity of the spirit, it is from the very start oriented toward expression, and terminates in a word proffered, it wants to speak; whereas mystical because it emanates from the deepest longing of the spirit bent on knowing, tends of itself toward silence and internal fruition. Poetic experience is busy with the created world and the enigmatic and innumerable relations of existents with one another, not with the Principle of Being." - Jacques Maritain
"When you are the leader in your field, it takes a greater level of innovation and commitment to stay there. Make a point to continually search for a better way of doing things, even when things are going well, to ensure that a better alternative has not been overlooked and to keep your creative talents in practice. Practice mental agility: Before you write off a far-fetched idea, back up and look at the big picture, because it might fit perfectly on another level. Have fun: When you are truly having fun in your work, creativity flows freely." - John C. Maxwell
"The schools have never been places for the stimulation of young minds. If all through school the young were provoked to question the Ten Commandments, the sanctity of revealed religion, the foundations of patriotism, the profit motive, the two-party system, monogamy, the laws of incest, and so on, we would have more creativity than we could handle." - Jules Henry
"Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life -- including ourselves. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator's creativity within us and our lives. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity." - Julia Cameron
"People frequently believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or specifically imagined." - Julia Cameron
"But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career." -
"I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare." - Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
"True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions are found." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"Instead of a bottom-line based on money and power, we need a new bottom-line that defines productivity and creativity as where corporations, governments, schools, public institutions, and social practices are judged as efficient, rational and productive not only to the extent they maximize money and power, but to the extent they maximize love and caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and our capacities to respond with awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation." - Michael Lerner
"Studying creativity is not an elite distraction, but provides one of the most exciting models for living." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives . . . most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity . . . when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"Today, peace means the ascent from simple coexistence to cooperation and common creativity among countries and nations. Peace is movement towards globality and universality of civilization. Never before has the idea that peace is indivisible been so true as it is now. Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences. And, ideally, peace means the absence of violence. It is an ethical value." - Mikhail Gorbachev, fully Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
"My purpose is to allow people to move closer to actually being creatures of free choice, to genuinely reflect individual creativity and emotion, freeing the body of habitual tensions and wired-patters of behaviour so that it may respond without inhibition to do what the person wants." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
"It is generally recognized that creativity requires leisure, an absence of rush, time for the mind and imagination to float and wander and roam, time for the individual to descend into the depths of his or her psyche, to be available to barely audible signals rustling for attention. Long periods of time may pass in which nothing seems to be happening. But we know that kind of space must be created if the mind is to leap out of its accustomed ruts, to part from the mechanical, the known, the familiar, the standard, and generate a leap into the new." - Nathaniel Branden
"In art there is liberation. The essential in artistic creativity is victory over the burden of necessity. In art man lives outside himself, outside his burdens, the burden of life. Every creative artistic act is a partial transfiguration of life." - Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
"The really creative person is not interested in dominating anybody. He is so utterly rejoicing in life — he wants to create, he wants to participate with God. Creativity is prayer. And whenever you create something, in those moments you are with God, you walk with God, you live in God. The more creative you are the more divine you are. To me, creativity is religion. Art is just the entrance to the temple of religion." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"The highest art one can learn is the art of loving, and that the ultimate creativity and the highest art are born out of a knack — meditation." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL