Creativity experts about creativity

Creativity quotes from creativity experts

Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom while discouragement often nips it at the bud. Creativity is now something we can turn on and off like a faucet. It is an experience and expression in our lives that must be nurtured. This nurturing process means that creativity is at once a skill, an art, and a life-style.
Alex Osborn (May 24, 1888 – May 13, 1966), American advertising executive, the author of “Brainstorming”.

Each of us has an Aladdin’s Lamp which psychologists call creative imagination.
Alex Osborn

It is easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one.
Alex Osborn

Whatever creative success I gained was due to my belief that creative power can be stepped up by effort, and that there are ways in which we can guide our creative thinking.
Alex Osborn

Most ideas are step-by-step children of other ideas.
Alex Osborn

Worry is essentially a misuse of imagination
Alex Osborn

Creative ideas reside in people’s minds but are trapped by fear or rejection. Create a judgment-free environment and you’ll unleash a torrent of creativity.
Alex Osborn

The ultimate solutions to problems are rational; the process of finding them is not.
William J. J. Gordon (September 9, 1919 – June 30, 2003), American inventor and psychologist, the creator of “Synectics”

The basis of creativity has always been a new connection. To make connections would take hours using words. Your subconscious has to use pictures.
William J. J. Gordon

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 (born May 19, 1933), Maltese author, consultant, expert on creative thinking

Creative thinking – in terms of idea creativity – is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practised and nurtured.
Edward de Bono

As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems.
Edward de Bono

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea
Edward de Bono

Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain way. Looked at in another way, the right course of action may be so obvious that the problem no longer exists.
Edward de Bono

Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea.
Edward de Bono

Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone.
Edward de Bono

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.
Edward de Bono

Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.
Edward de Bono

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

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

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
Edward de Bono

Humour is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
Edward de Bono

The purpose of science is not to analyze or describe but to make useful models of the world. A model is useful if it allows us to get use out of it.
Edward de Bono

People should realize we’re jerks just like them.
Edward de Bono

Opportunity ideas do not lie around waiting to be discovered. Such ideas need to be produced.
Edward de Bono

Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.
Edward de Bono

Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.
Edward de Bono

It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.
Edward de Bono

If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd.
Edward de Bono

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.
Edward de Bono

I must say, I don’t feel very qualified to be a pop star. I feel very awkward at times in the role.
Edward de Bono

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
Edward de Bono

The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas.
Edward de Bono

In the future, instead of striving to be right at a high cost, it will be more appropriate to be flexible and plural at a lower cost. If you cannot accurately predict the future then you must flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.
Edward de Bono

In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better.
Edward de Bono

Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
Edward de Bono

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
Edward de Bono

An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
Edward de Bono

Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.
Edward de Bono

To be successful you have to be lucky, or a little mad, or very talented, or find yourself in a rapid growth field.
Edward de Bono

Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
Edward de Bono

One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.
Edward de Bono

If you never change your mind, why have one?
Edward de Bono

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
Edward de Bono

Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.
Edward de Bono

Man owes his success to his creativity. No one doubts the need for it. It is most useful in good times and essential in bad.
Edward de Bono

Creative thinking is not a talent, it is a skill that can be learnt. It empowers people by adding strength to their natural abilities which improves teamwork, productivity and where appropriate profits.
Edward de Bono

Learning how to learn is life’s most important skill.
Tony Buzan (born 2 June 1942), English educational and creativity consultant, the author of ”Mind Mapping”

We teach mental literacy and radiant thinking; a revolution in human thought.
Tony Buzan

Through using our memory to its fullest we can unlock the vast reservoir of human potential that isn’t currently being used.
Tony Buzan

The human brain has left and right brain symmetry with its own nature and can process information which initially appears to have no pattern or order. However, the brain has the ability to process visual information much more efficiently.
Tony Buzan

The best results are achieved by using the right amount of effort in the right place at the right time. And this right amount is usually less than we think we need.
Tony Buzan

Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.
Michael Michalko, American creative thinking expert and the author of “’Thinkertoys”

Perception is demonstrably an active rather than a passive process; it constructs rather than records ‘reality.
Michael Michalko

Perception implies understanding as well as awareness.
Michael Michalko

The more possible futures you foresee, the more options you can create; the more options you have, the greater your chances of finding the unexpected opportunity.
Michael Michalko

Paying attention to the world around you will help you develop the extraordinary capacity to look at mundane things and see the miraculous.
Michael Michalko

We build our own reality. Even colors are products of our mind. Vincent van Gogh told his brother he could see twenty-seven different shades of gray.
Michael Michalko

Collaboration over time creates a different understanding of a subject.
Michael Michalko

The principle to remember is that all dualities and opposites are not disjoined but polar. They do not confront each other from afar; they originate in a common center.
Michael Michalko

A first-class idea person can slice and dice challenges into separate, simple attributes and then combine them into new, more complex structures as stars do.
Michael Michalko

Manipulation is the brother of creativity… Remember that everything new is just an addition or modification no something that already existed.
Michael Michalko

By coming up with different combinations of the variations of the parameters, you create new idea.
Michael Michalko

To solve a problem, you have to believe that you already have the answer in your unconscious.
Michael Michalko

Creative thinking is inclusive thinking. You consider the least obvious as well as the most likely approaches, and you look for different ways to look at the problem. It is the willingness to explore all approaches that is important, even after one has found a promising one.
Michael Michalko

Much of creative genius hinges on the willingness to creatively observe the seemingly irrelevant and find the latent potential.
Michael Michalko

Once we have a belief, we tend to look to confirm that belief by what we observe. Psychologists call this phenomenon ‘confirmation bias.
Michael Michalko

Habits, thinking patterns, and routines with which we approach life gradually accumulate until they significantly reduce our awareness of other possibilities.
Michael Michalko

Creativity, it could be said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know.
Michael Michalko

All invention and discovery is permeated by the idea of thinking the unthinkable.
Michael Michalko

What you say affects how you feel. How you feel affects how you think, and vice versa. All language, feelings, and thoughts interact with each other, and the entire accumulation of those influences creates your output and behavior
Michael Michalko

To visualize yourself as creative, affirm that you believe it to be true.
Michael Michalko

Dreams are a rich source of ideas, as they often contain combinations and rearrangement of objects, challenges and events that would be almost impossible to come up with while awake.
Michael Michalko

Your inner guide is a manifestation of the higher part of your unconscious. You can evoke your inner guide to come forth as a person or being who can help you meet an solve your challenges.
Michael Michalko

Work on two or more unrelated problems in parallel. When you run into a brick wall with one problem, move to the next.
Michael Michalko

If you change one element – your language – your thoughts and feelings will be changed as well. The cumulative impact will be new patterns of output and behavior.
Michael Michalko

Make it a habit to keep the written record of your creativity attempts in a notebook, on file cards or in your computer. A record not only guarantees that the thoughts and ideas will last, since they are committed to paper or computer files, but will inspire you into other thoughts and ideas.
Michael Michalko

Leonardo da Vinci’s technique for getting ideas was to close his eyes, relax totally, and cover a sheet of paper with random lines and scribbles. He would then open his eyes and look for images and patterns, objects, faces, or events in the scribble.
Michael Michalko

“What – iffing” is a great way to learn to direct your imagination toward a desired goal. This technique lets your ego relax, and the playfulness of the ideas it generates will cause it to relax even more.
Michael Michalko

We need ways to unstructure our imaginations to explore the outer limits and dazzling variety of our concepts, so that we can go beyond the typical and concoct wonderfully unusual ideas.
Michael Michalko

When you go through the motions of being creative, you are energizing your brain by increasing the number of contacts between neurons. The more times you act, the more active your brain becomes and the more creative you become.
Michael Michalko

In school we were not taught how to think; we were taught to reproduce what past thinkers thought.
Michael Michalko

Ideas are not solutions; they are the raw material of solutions.
Arthur VanGundy (May 24, 1946 – May 5, 2009), American psychologist, creative thinking expert

Throwing away ideas too soon is like opening a package of flower seeds and then throwing them away because they’re not pretty.
Arthur VanGundy

If you fall in love with an idea, you won’t see the merits of alternative approaches—and will probably miss an opportunity or two. One of life’s great pleasures is letting go of a previously cherished idea. Then you’re free to look for new ones. What part of your idea are you in love with? What would happen if you kissed it goodbye?
Roger von Oech (born February 16, 1948), American author, creativity theorist, consultant, and inventor

Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.
Roger von Oech

It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.
Roger von Oech

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.
Roger von Oech

Either you let your life slip away by not doing the things you want to do, or you get up and do them.
Roger von Oech

There is a close relationship between the “ha-ha” of humor and the “aha!” of discovery.
Roger von Oech

Here’s my advice: Go ahead and be whacky. Get into a crazy frame of mind and ask what’s funny about what you’re doing.
Roger von Oech

It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.
Roger von Oech

Everyone has a ‘risk muscle.’ You keep it in shape by trying new things. If you don’t, it atrophies. Make a point of using it at least once a day.
Roger von Oech