101 inspiring Quotes about Creativity to Ignite your Imagination

Need some creative inspiration? There’s a quote for that.

The Best Quotes about Creativity

Our top quotes about creativity will inspire you to let your imagination run wild. But they aren’t exactly what you’d expect.

Of course, we have the traditional inspirational quotes, but in researching this article, we found a lot of great ideas that speak to the very essence of humanity.

We learned that creativity isn’t just about art. It’s about progress, innovation, and what it means to be human.

We hope you enjoy these quotes as much as we do!

Inspirational Quotes about Creativity

First, you need some inspiration. These quotes about creativity should inspire you to dream more, for our dreams are the starting point of all our creative pursuits.

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

“Our dreams may seem impossible, but our creativity can turn them into reality.” – Malala Yousafzai

“The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.” – Sarah Ban Breathnach

“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

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein

“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” – Rita Mae Brown

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath

“Creativity involves breaking out of expected patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” – Edward de Bono

“You can’t schedule creativity, it just happens.” – Brittany Cabriales

“Our dreams are the canvas, and our creativity is the paint that brings them to life.” – Xiuhtezcatl Martinez

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.” – Dieter F. Uchtdorf

“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” – E. E. Cummings

“If you want to be able to do great things, whether you’re a musician, or whether you’re an entrepreneur, or whether you’re an investor, you need free time and you need a free mind.” – Naval Ravikant

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Carl Sagan

“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.” – Peter F. Drucker

“It’s harder to create than to destroy.” – Angela Jiang

“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?” – Dr. Seuss

“Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.” – Bruce Garrabrandt

“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.” – Edwin H. Land

“Do something creative every day.” – Anonymous

“What keeps life fascinating is the constant creativity of the soul.” – Deepak Chopra

“Creativity is the place where only you can go. Your discovery there will be wonderful, for you will have discovered yourself.” – Catherine Hall Taughinbaugh

Art & Creativity

Humans developed the ultimate form of creative expression: art.

Here’s what some of the greatest creative geniuses of all time say about creativity.

“The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.” – Pablo Picasso

“That’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.” – Walt Disney

“Everything you can imagine is real.” – Pablo Picasso

“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

“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.” – Kurt Vonnegut

“You cannot teach creativity — how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.” – Mario Vargas Llosa

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.” – Mary Shelley

“Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse

“Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.” – Bruce Garrabrandt

“Begin by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you.” – Salvador Dali

“My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life.” – Miles Davis

“The painter has the universe in his mind and hands.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.” – Pablo Picasso

“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.” – Leo Tolstoy

“Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.” – Austin Kleon

“When I am completely myself, entirely alone during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.” – Mozart

“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant; there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent van Gogh

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol

“Replace fear with curiosity.” – Steven Spielberg

“Ideas come from everything.” – Alfred Hitchcock

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.” – Dr. Seuss

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.” – John Cleese

Creativity & Innovation

Creativity isn’t just for expression – it’s also the secret ingredient to innovation!

All the great accomplishments of humanity started with a single spark of creativity. These creativity quotes remind us that it’s the secret sauce to the next big achievement.

“The most creative people are motivated by the grandest of problems that are presented before them.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” – Thomas A. Edison

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” – Mary Lou Cook

“Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.” – Max Ernst

“Imagination is the source of all human achievement.” – Sir Ken Robinson

“Encouraging imagination is the mother of invention.” – Adam Grant

“You can be creative in anything — in math, science, engineering, philosophy-as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance.” – Sir Ken Robinson

“There is no innovation and creativity without failure.” – Brené Brown

“I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking” – Albert Einstein

“Human creativity uses what is already existing and available and changes it in unpredictable ways.” – Silvano Arieti

“Intelligence uses what is known to solve problems. Creativity uses what is unknown to discover possibilities.” – Simon Sinek

“It may be that our cosmic curiosity is a genetically encoded force that we illuminate when we look up and wonder.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

“There’s a way to do it better – find it.” – Thomas A. Edison

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein

“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.” – Steve Jobs

 “Making the simple complicated is commonplace. Making the complicated simple awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” – Charles Mingus

“This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.” – Edward de Bono

“When learning is purposeful, creativity blossoms. When creativity blossoms, thinking emanates. When thinking emanates, knowledge is fully lit. When knowledge is lit, economy flourishes.” – A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

“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 

“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” – George Lois

“There are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.” – Thomas A. Edison 

Inspiring Human Progress

We usually don’t think about creativity and social justice in the same breath, but these quotes might change your mind.

Some of our favorite quotes about creativity shine a new light on imaginative thinking. These progressive leaders remind us that all great social change starts with an idea, and that idea comes from creative thinking.

All great movements start with a creative spark.  

“The power of our dreams and the creativity we employ can break the chains of injustice and oppression.” – Desmond Tutu

“Creativity is our most powerful tool to shape the world we want to live in.” – Isra Hirsi

“Creativity fuels our imagination, and our imagination fuels our dreams of a better world.” – Greta Thunberg

“Dreams are the starting point of every revolution, and creativity fuels its fire.” – Gloria Steinem

“Dreaming without action is merely a fantasy. Channel your creativity into real change.” – Jamie Margolin

“The dreamers are the saviors of the world.” – James Allen

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.” – Brene Brown

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” – Jack Kerouac

“Originality is the best form of rebellion.” – Mike Sasso

“If you’re to create something powerful and important, you must at the very least be driven by an equally powerful inner force.” – Ryan Holiday

“90% of creativity is daring to think beyond the rules.” – Maxime Lagacé

“The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.” – Martin Luther King Jr

“Without freedom, there is no creation.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti

“The opposite of creativity is cynicism.” – Esa Saarinen

“Creativity has got to start with humanity, and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer.” – Marilyn Monroe

“Creativity is the greatest expression of liberty.” – Bryant H. McGill

“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

What is Creativity?

These final quotes about creativity don’t fit neatly in the other boxes, but they speak to the core of what creativity is.

It’s hard to define.  All humans have it, so it seems common, yet we’re the only species in the universe (that we know of) with the ability to imagine something into existence.

What’s the essence of creativity? Where does it come from? Is it rest, free thought, boredom, or something else?

We don’t know – but these quotes highlight what others think about it.

“Rest nurtures creativity, which nurtures activity. Activity nurtures rest, which sustains creativity. Each draws from and contributes to the other.” – Kim John Payne

“Overthinking the process will kill any career in the creative space. You just have to do, not think.” – Casey Neistat

“Sometimes the creativity is in the rest.” – Joshua Kissi

“Creativity is problem-solving. Creativity is progress. Creativity is a tool. Harness yours.” – Alex Lieberman

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” – Bruce Lee

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” – Henry Thomas Buckle

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein

“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, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” – Osho

“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.” – Albert Einstein

“The most talented, thought-provoking, game-changing people are never normal.” – Richard Branson

“If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.” – Larry Page

“The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.” – Arthur Koestler

“For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.” – Jean Dubuffet

“Creative activity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.” – Arthur Koestler

“The less scheduled you are, the more creative you’re going to be.” – Naval Ravikant

“When all think alike, then no one is thinking.” – Walter Lippmann

“Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.” – Austin Kleon

“Creativity loves boredom. Distraction loves overstimulation.” – Maxime Lagacé

“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.” – Madeleine L’Engle

 “The creative person is willing to live with ambiguity. He doesn’t need problems solved immediately and can afford to wait for the right ideas.” – Abe Tannenbaum

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” – Ray Bradbury

“Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.” – Eric Hoffer

“Clean out a corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.” – Dee Hock

Share Your Favorite Quotes!

What’s your favorite quote about creativity? Share it so we can add it to the list and inspire even more people!