51 Inspirational Quotes About Creativity and Innovation
Creativity and innovation are foundational drivers of performance in the modern workplace, shaping not only the firms ability to adapt to shifting markets but also generate value, and sustain competitive advantages.
Creativity the generation of novel and useful ideas, and Innovation the successful implementation and diffusion of those ideas operate together as a dynamic capability that transforms uncertainty into opportunity.
As an innovation consultancy that helps businesses solve complex challenges, align teams, and drive innovation, we have observed how a single well-timed thought or saying can recontextualize a problem and catalyze action.
This compilation of quotes brings together thought-provoking insights on creativity and innovation that will help you challenge assumptions and encourage action. Treat each quote like a tiny design brief: read it aloud, argue with it, build from it!
Dive in, pick one quote, and see what it helps you and your team create and innovate!
Inspirational Quotes About Creativity
1. 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
2. Creativity is intelligence having fun.
― Albert Einstein
3. The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
― Carl Gustav Jung
4. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
― Ayn Rand
5. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
― Sylvia Plath
6. All things are created twice; first mentally; then physically. The key to creativity is to begin with the end in mind, with a vision and a blue print of the desired result.
― Stephen R. Covey
7. You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
― Maya Angelou
8. Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.
― Brene Brown
9. A creative life cannot be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.
― Will Self
10. Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
― Scott Adams
11. Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
― Erich Fromm
12. Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.
― Osho
13. Creativity takes courage.
― Henri Matisse
14. Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity
― T.S. Eliot
15. 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
16. 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.
― Elizabeth Gilbert
17. Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.
― Edward de Bono
18. Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
― Eric Hoffer
19. Creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness.
― Julia Cameron
20. Creativity is obscured by the conscious mind.
― Naval Ravikant
21. Creativity is the cornerstone of differentiation in business.
― Tom Kelley
22. The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.
― Dieter F. Uchtdorf
23. Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will.
― George Bernard Shaw
24. The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self – our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.
― Robert Greene
25. 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
26. We are defined not by the technologies we create but the process in which we create them.
― Clarence “Kelly” Johnson
27. Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.
— Leo Burnett
28. The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.
― Pablo Picasso
29. If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
— John Cleese
30. This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
― Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational Quotes About Innovation
31. The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.
― Peter F. Drucker
32. Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.
― Pablo Picasso
33. A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
34. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
― Alan Kay
35. You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
― R. Buckminster Fuller
36. The most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’
― Grace Hopper
37. Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.
― Theodore Levitt
38. One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
― Marie Curie
39. No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.
― Winston Churchill
40. There’s a way to do it better–find it.
― Thomas Edison
41. You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.
― Albert Einstein
42. I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.
― Jeff Bezos
43. Innovation is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
― Dr. Albert Szent-Györgyi
44. Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.
― William Pollard
45. Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
― Steve Jobs
46. The most innovative designers consciously reject the standard option box and cultivate an appetite for thinking wrong.
― Marty Neumeier
47. If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
― Charles Kettering
48. What good is an idea if it remains an idea? Try. Experiment. Iterate. Fail. Try again. Change the world.
― Simon Sinek
49. Innovation is created as a result of constructive conflict.
― Jeff DeGraff
50. Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity.
― Michael Porter
51. The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
― Socrates
In today’s world of constant change and complexity, the ability to solve the right problems creatively, inclusively, and decisively isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a business-critical capability.
If you’re serious about building the skills your organisation needs to thrive, especially in team building, creative problem solving, design thinking and innovation – get in touch with us.
