Creative Thought Quotes

To me, music and songwriting is ... part of the intriguing thing is the creative process; you know, the creative thought process. Relying on that ... there is some sort of inspiration there and you can't always put your finger on where it comes from. So, it's always been important for me to have my own thing and, even though I'm inspired by and influenced by many different musicians and styles of music, I was very determined early on to have my own thing. So when I sit down to write I don't necessarily have a particular narrative or message in mind. I'm interested in language and in words. ~ Page Hamilton

Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going. ~ Laurence J. Peter

At 42, I decided to become a photographer because it offered a means of creative thought and action. I didn't rationalize this, I just felt it intuitively and followed my intuition, which I have never regretted. ~ Wynn Bullock

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create. ~ William Blake

In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love revive, filling it with sublimity and exaltation. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

It has become fashionable to speak of the Enlightenment as an idiosyncratic construction by European males in a bygone era, one way of thinking among many different constructions generated across time by a legion of other minds in other cultures, each of which deserves careful and respectful attention. To which the only decent response is yes, of course - to a point. Creative thought is forever precious, and all knowledge has value. But what counts most in the long haul of history is seminality, not sentiment. If we ask whose ideas were the seeds of the dominant ethic and shared hopes of contemporary humanity, whose resulted in the most material advancement in history, whose were the first of their kind and today enjoy the most emulation, then in that sense the Enlightenment, despite the erosion of its original vision and despite the shakiness of some of its premises, has been the principal inspiration not just of Western high culture but, increasingly, of the entire world. ~ Edward O. Wilson

Corporal Nobbs," he rasped, "why are you kicking people when they're down?" "Safest way, sir," said Nobby. Nobby had long ago been told about fighting fair and not striking a fallen opponent, and had then given some creative thought to how these rules applied to someone four feet tall with the muscle tone of an elastic band. ~ Terry Pratchett

Jerry Hirshberg, in his book The Creative Priority: Putting Innovation to Work in Your Business, writes, No one in a corporation deliberately sets out to stifle creative thought. Yet, a traditional bureaucratic structure, with its need for predictability, linear logic, conformance to accepted norms, and the dictates of the most recent "long-range" vision statement, is a nearly perfect idea-killing machine. People in groups regress toward the security of the familiar and the well-regulated. Even creative people do it. It's easier. It avoids the ambiguity, the fear of unpredictability, the threat of the unfamiliar, and the messiness of intuition and human emotion. ~ John C. Maxwell

Political and social events must also be effective, but not in a very obvious fashion. But political confusion and prolonged peace undoubtedly affect creative thought but whether they respectively hinder or help it is not at all certain. ~ John Desmond Bernal

Your Life is always a result of your thoughts about it-including your obviously creative thought that you seldom get what you choose. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

Schools train you to be ignorant with style [ ... ] they prepare you to be a usable victim for a military industrial complex that needs manpower. As long as you're just smart enough to do a job and just dumb enough to swallow what they feed you, you're going to be alright [ ... ] So I believe that schools mechanically and very specifically try and breed out any hint of creative thought in the kids that are coming up. ~ Frank Zappa

Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

we were appealing to another power in us which comes from our innate consciousness, the source of the sense of harmony. If it is effective, this power will be the reason for genius, for creative thought, creative in the sense that it works ahead of the known, the classified. Isn't it this consciousness of a new way, dictated to today's decadent world, which impels artists to destroy the idols of yesterday in order to attempt irrational expressions? They seek a concordance of the elements of "sensations," ignoring the rational combinations which only satisfy the inertia of acquired habit. Atmospheres, images, and forms are created to evoke a feeling, an emotion, to provoke a vital reaction. Art is the herald of the mentality of a period, the harbinger of its innermost tendency. ~ R. A. Schwaller De Lubicz

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

I dislike frontiers, political or intellectual, and I find that ignoring them is an essential catalyst for creative thought. Ideas should flow without hindrance in their natural course. ~ Michael Atiyah

Lyotard develops and extends Weber's argument regarding the disenchantment of art to suggest the Western culture increasingly obeys an instrumental logic of performance and control, one that imposes order on the free play of the imagination and subordinates creative thought to the demands of the capitalist market. And, for Lyotard, the effects of this process are consistent with those outlined in Weber's work, namely the progressive elimination of ritual or religious forms of art, the restriction of creative forms by an instrumental (capitalist) rationality, and with this the denigration of value-rational artistic practice. ~ Nicholas Gane

As long as you're just smart enough to do a job and just dumb enough to swallow what they feed you, you're gonna be alright. But if you go beyond that then you're gonna have these grave doubts that give you stomach problems, headachesmake you want to go out and do something else. So, I believe that schools mechanically and very specifically try and breed out any hint of creative thought in the kids that are coming out. ~ Frank Zappa

I am firmly convinced to-day that, generally speaking, it is in youth that men lay the essential groundwork of their creative thought, wherever that creative thought exists. I make a distinction between the wisdom of age- which can only arise from the greater profundity and foresight that are based on the experiences of a long life- and the creative genius of youth, which blossoms out in thoughts and ideas with inexhaustible fertility, without being able to put these into practice immediately, because of their very superabundance. These furnish the building materials and plans for the future; and it is from them that age takes the stones and builds the edifice, unless the so-called wisdom of the years may have smothered the creative genius of youth. ~ Adolf Hitler

You can not entertain weak, harmful, negative thoughts ten hours a day and expect to bring about beautiful, strong and harmonious conditions by ten minutes of strong, positive, creative thought. ~ Charles F. Haanel

Above and beyond all else it must be borne in mind that hatred tends to dry up the springs of creative thought in the life of the hater, so that his resourcefulness becomes completely focused on the negative aspects of his environment. The urgent needs of the personality for creative expression are starved to death. A man's horizon may become so completely dominated by the intense character of his hatred that there remains no creative residue in his mind and spirit to give to great ideas, to great concepts. ~ Howard Thurman

I believe that in the process of locating new avenues of creative thought, we will also arrive at an existential conservatism. It is worth asking repeatedly: Where are our deepest roots? We are, it seems, Old World, catarrhine primates, brilliant emergent animals, defined genetically by our unique origins, blessed by our newfound biological genius, and secure in our homeland if we wish to make it so. What does it all mean? This is what it all means: To the extent that we depend on prosthetic devices to keep ourselves and the biosphere alive, we will render everything fragile. To the extent that we banish the rest of life, we will impoverish our own species for all time. And if we should surrender our genetic nature to machine-aided ratiocination, and our ethics and art and our very meaning to a habit of careless discursion in the name of progress, imagining ourselves godlike and absolved from our ancient heritage, we will become nothing. ~ Edward O. Wilson

Creative thought must always contain a random component. ~ Gregory Bateson

They'd spent their lives not breaking laws, and till now they'd thought the rest of the world had been doing the same. But someone had changed the rules and forgotten to send them a telegram ~ Edward Stewart

It comes out so quietly that I have to ask her to repeat it: It's just that I thought maybe you were married to me. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

Endless nights took on my whole life. Or so I thought. It turns out that all your friends, they were just mean, dressed up. ~ Tegan Quin

The time for letting the Christian bashing go on essentially unchallenged has come to an end ... There is a great need for a Christian anti-defamation league. To some degree, there is such an organization emerging on the horizon, the Catholic League ... I have had it on my heart for about a decade - and have even expressed the thought - that a Christian anti-defamation league would be helpful. ~ D. James Kennedy

God is constantly creating anew. And God also, invites us to be re-created and join the work of God as co-(re)creators ... Imagine the Kingdom of God as the creative process of God reengaging in all that we know and experience ... When we employ creativity to make this world better, we participate with God in the recreation of the world. ~ Doug Pagitt

Ego's trick is to make us lose sight of our interdependence. That kind of ego-thought gives us a perfect justification to look out only for ourselves. But that is far from the truth. In reality we all depend on each other and we have to help each other. The husband has to help his wife, the wife has to help the husband, the mother has to help her children, and the children are supposed to help the parents too, whether they want to or not. ~ Gelek Rimpoche

I started piano lessons at age six but didn't take music seriously until I was a teenager, when I thought about a career in music. I studied classical music, and my instruments were guitar and piano. I played keyboards in bands, and after high school I went to Vienna to study at the Academy of Music. I also became a session player, which culminated in my work with Tangerine Dream. ~ Paul Haslinger

I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns. ~ Anne Tyler

A great thinker does not necessarily have to discover a master idea but has to rediscover and to affirm a true but forgotten, ignored or misunderstood master idea and interpret it in all the diverse aspects of thought not previously done, in a powerful and consistent way, despite surrounding ignorance and opposition. This criterion we think would include all prophets and their true followers among the Muslim scholars. He is both a great and original thinker who brings new meanings and interpretations to old ideas, thereby providing both continuity and originality to the important intellectual and cultural problems of his time and through it, of mankind. Thus the brilliant interpretations of scholars and sages like al-Ghazali and Mulla Sadra then, and Iqbal and al-Attas now, deserve to be recognized and acknowledged as manifesting certain qualities of greatness and originality. ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

They'd smash up the world if they thought it would make a pretty noise. ~ Terry Pratchett

I thought of this, tell me whether it is true or false; you do not know something, you cannot know everything and you can miss anything ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I never meant that," [Anyan] said, eventually. "I've never thought you were pathetic and I don't consider you half of anything." His voice was sad, the tone familiar yet unidentifiable that I wanted to scream. "You're Jane," he concluded, "and that's enough." He looked over at me, his face shadowed but his eyes still visible. ~ Nicole Peeler

There was a man that hated his footprints and his shadow, so one day he thought that if he ran fast enough, his footprints and shadow would not be able to follow him and then he never ever had to look at them again. He ran and he ran as fast as he could, but the shadow and the footprints had no problems keeping up to him. And he ran even faster and all of a sudden he fell dead to the ground. But if he been standing still there hadn't been any footprints and if he had been resting under a tree his shadow had been swallowed of the trees shadow. ~ Benjamin Hoff

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it. ~ Charles Frazier

Connor turned to Vanda. "I'll need to check yer bag, too."
"I thought you'd never ask." Vanda tossed her bag onto the table. She was ready for him this time.
He opened her silver evening bag. His eyes widened.
She was quite proud that she'd managed to squeeze a pair of handcuffs, a blindfold, her back massager, and a bottle of Viagra
into such a tiny handbag. She smiled sweetly. "Something wrong, Connor? ~ Kerrelyn Sparks

I always thought I'd be really fun to sing a song with Miley. ~ Taylor Swift

I thought of Shelley in the hospital, how she said sometimes sadness only looked like anger and judgment. Maybe fear did too. ~ Holly Cupala

Maybe I . . . shouldn't tell him what I thought I'd heard. Not until I knew more. How exactly would I put the revelation anyway? Jack's alive, but apparently he kept that little detail secret. Ah, but Matthew spilled the beans! Buying myself time, I waved Aric on.

I was scarcely listening as he began talking about Paul, of all people. How the EMT had grown worried when I'd been shut in with my grandmother for so long. How I had lost weight and become listless. The man had pleaded with me to get a checkup, even offering to source contraception after Aric and I had started sleeping together.

Wait. I glanced up. "After?"

Aric nodded. "He said you told him you had no need of contraception."

The hell? "I went to him and got a shot prior to us getting together. I told you about it."

"As I told him in turn, but he swears that never happened."

Real? Unreal? Had I . . . imagined my meeting with Paul? I'd already feared gaps in my memory; Gran had told me things that I'd had no recollection of. Was I now inventing memories?

Had I invented Jack's return?

In a soothing voice, Aric said, "I'm not angry, love. Just talk to me." He wasn't the first person to look at me as if I'd gone insane, like I was trouble with the possibility of rubble.

Won't be the last.

No. I refused this. I had heard Jack, and I had gotten that shot. "It did happen, which means Paul's a liar." But why would ~ Kresley Cole

I'm resourceful," Price is saying. "I'm creative, I'm young, unscrupulous, highly motivate, highly skilled. In essence what I'm saying is that society cannot afford to lose me. I'm an asset ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Ben invented mathematical theories that even he didn't manage to remember and wrote such bizarre tales of adventure that he ended up destroying them a week after they were finished, embarrassed at the thought that he had penned them. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Catti-brie had to believe that now, recalling the scene in light of the drow's words. She had to believe that her love for Wulfgar had been real, very real, and not misplaced, that he was all she had thought him to be.

Now she could. For the first time since Wulfgar's death, Cattie-brie could remember him without pangs of guilt, without the fears that, had he lived, she would not have married him. Because Drizzt was right; Wulfgar would have admitted the error despite his pride, and he would have grown, as he always had before. That was the finest quality of the man, an almost childlike quality, that viewed the world and his own life as getting better, as moving toward a better way in a better place.

What followed was the most sincere smile on Cattie-brie's face in many, many months. She felt suddenly free, suddenly complete with her past, reconciled and able to move forward with her life.

She looked at the drow, wide-eyed, with a curiosity that seemed to surprise Drizzt. She could go on, but what exactly did that mean?

Slowly, Cattie-brie began shaking her head, and Drizzt came to understand that the movement had something to do with him. He lifted a slender hand and brushed some stray hair back from her cheek, his ebony skin contrasting starkly with her light skin, even in the quiet light of night.

"I do love you," the drow admitted. The blunt statement did not catch Catti-brie by surprise, not at all. "As you love me," ~ R.A. Salvatore

They did offer me a chance of being a V in the crowd, but it's not my scene. I think they just thought it would be fun for me to do that, but I don't know. I heard that Stan Lee appears in every movie of his. ~ David Lloyd

The stars glittered through the atmosphere, and he thought of the distances that light must take to hit his eye at exactly that moment. Without him here, those photons would have been wasted. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I'm just a very creative and outgoing person and I love being around people and being around music. It just gives me energy. ~ Paris Hilton

I was looking through half-open eyes at the sky, like the first man, and thinking about how - there you are - my uncle had died, about how they would now be burying him, about how I would never meet him. I stood petrified, thinking that one day I too would die. At the same time I was horror-stricken to realize that my mother would also die. All of this came rushing upon me in a flash of a peculiar violet color, in a twinkling, and the sudden activity in my intestines and in my heart told me that what had seemed at first just a foreboding was indeed the truth. This experience made me realize, without any circumlocution, that I would die one day, and so would my mother, and my sister Anna. I couldn't imagine how one day my hand would die, how my eyes would die. Looking over my hand, I caught this thought on my palm, connected to my body, indivisible from it. ~ Danilo Kis

And then, anger gave way to pure and simple job satisfaction. I mean, when I looked at a dead zombie head on a spike, I thought, Hey, I did that. Picasso would have been proud. Especially how I rearranged that eye ~ Jesse Petersen

Fashion goes beyond fabric; it is the attempt to manifest art on a breathing canvas. I am very excited to collaborate with the artistic community as we celebrate this diversity of creative vision. ~ David Dixon

For a moment Bramblestar thought that he could see Firestar and Dustpelt weaving around the two new-made elders, the four cats united again. But before he could be certain, the image faded. ~ Erin Hunter

Isabelle thought her heart might burst.One by one, queens, pirates, empresses, and generals from all the corners of the world told their stories, bowed their heads, and left the stage. They were not pretty, these women. Pretty did not begin to describe them.
They were shrewd. Powerful, Wily. Proud. Dangerous.
They were strong.
They were brave.
They were beautiful. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

God has, in fact, thought of us from eternity and has loved us as unique individuals. He has called every one of us by name, as the Good Shepherd 'calls His sheep by name.' ~ Pope John Paul II

It's ever so fun and fulfilling to be clever, but more lasting and effective to be consistent. ~ Teresa R. Funke, Bursts Of Brilliance For A Creative Life Blog

while he emphasized that peace is wonderful, Rogers was not altogether starry-eyed in this first week. In fact, he seemed quite the political realist in teaching us that peacemaking will be hard work. It will certainly require the most creative thoughts our moral imagination can muster. Like Daniel Striped Tiger, we will have to move beyond typical options and come up with creative strategies that surprise and shock the warmongers we seek to influence. Peacemaking will also no doubt be time-consuming. It will require us, as it did Lady Aberlin, to take time off from our regular work to create and carry out unique plans we would not normally even consider. And peacemaking will lead us into moments of doubt and uncertainty. Like Lady Aberlin and Mister Rogers, we will find ourselves wondering whether our ideas will really work. ~ Michael G. Long

I am nothing, she thought. Nothing but myself. ~ Rhiannon Thomas

Though I'd never hit anyone before, the thought of smashing my father's face sounded pretty satisfying. ~ Carrie Mesrobian

I believe that - if you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression - that you should take on this work like a holy calling ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

When I was growing up, my parents always told me that I had to do what I thought was right and not listen to other people. That was hard for me. ~ Hillary Clinton

One by one, the snowflakes floated down on to his warm snout, and melted. He reached out to grab them so he could admire them for a fleeting moment. He looked towards the sky and watched them drift down towards him, more and more, soft and light as a feather. 'So that's how it works,' thought Moomintroll. 'And I thought somehow that the snow grew from the ground up! ~ Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter

I have always thought of memories as fragments, like colored glass shards in a kaleidoscope. It is the source of great beauty in our lives, yet the cause of such heartache. ~ Lang Leav

An attachment grew up. What is an attachment? It is the most difficult of all the human interrelationships to explain, because it is the vaguest, the most impalpable. It has all the good points of love, and none of its drawbacks. No jealousy, no quarrels, no greed to possess, no fear of losing possession, no hatred (which is very much a part of love), no surge of passion and no hangover afterward. It never reaches the heights, and it never reaches the depths.

As a rule it comes on subtly. As theirs did. As a rule the two involved are not even aware of it at first. As they were not. As a rule it only becomes noticeable when it is interrupted in some way, or broken off by circumstances. As theirs was. In other words, its presence only becomes known in its absence. It is only missed after it stops. While it is still going on, little thought is given to it, because little thought needs to be.

It is pleasant to meet, it is pleasant to be together. To put your shopping packages down on a little wire-backed chair at a little table at a sidewalk cafe, and sit down and have a vermouth with someone who has been waiting there for you. And will be waiting there again tomorrow afternoon. Same time, same table, same sidewalk cafe. Or to watch Italian youth going through the gyrations of the latest dance craze in some inexpensive indigenous night-place-while you, who come from the country where the dance originated, only get up to do a sedate fox trot. It is even pleas ~ Cornell Woolrich

My father thought sport was something fun - he didn't know it was a way to make money. Then I won a Mercedes at the world championships and I gave it to him. From the moment it arrived my father said: 'Good, you can support not just yourself but me too'. ~ Haile Gebrselassie