180 Powerful Creativity Quotes to Motivate and Inspire You

Craving creativity quotes?

An inspirational creativity quote can “rouse you into productivity and creativity.” (Mary Garden)

And if one doesn’t do it, the other hundred-plus will!

Find 180 motivating quotes:

• Albert Einstein creativity quotes
• Steve Jobs creativity quotes
• More famous creativity quotes
• Creativity quotes, short and sweet for tweets
• Funny creativity quotes
• And more!

Ready to get creative? Let’s go!

Creativity Quotes by and for Creatives

Don’t wallow in your creative block – get out there and make something! As Elizabeth Gilbert would say (and did), “It doesn’t have to be amazing, it just has to be authentic.”

NOTE: Feel free to pin my quote graphics to Pinterest while keeping the link to this page intact, but do not download for other uses. Read my copyright.

Illustrated quotes copyright of and used with permission of Positively Present. Follow, and become a Patreon!

Creativity Quotes by Einstein

Famous Einstein quotes abound online.

The only problem is – Einstein never said most of them!

Interestingly, I was able to find more definitive information on fake Einstein quotes than on ones he actually said! To my knowledge, the following group of quotes attributed to Einstein have yet to be debunked.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
~ Albert Einstein

If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
~ Albert Einstein

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.
~ Albert Einstein

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
~ Albert Einstein

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.
~ Albert Einstein

Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience.
~ Albert Einstein

Creativity is contagious, pass it on.
~ Albert Einstein

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
~ Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
~ Albert Einstein

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
~ Albert Einstein

I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.
~ Albert Einstein

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
~ Albert Einstein

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
~ Albert Einstein

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.
~ Albert Einstein

For more, read fake Einstein quotes and learn a little about his life.

Our thanks to MyMathDone for the brilliant infographic at the end of this post – and also for introducing me to the awesome anagram Albert Einstein = Ten Elite Brains.

Creativity Quotes by Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was the visionary creator of Apple products. Read on for the best quotes from Mr. Jobs.

Creativity is just connecting things.
~ Steve Jobs

If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much.
~ Steve Jobs

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
~ Steve Jobs

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
~ Steve Jobs

The way to ratchet up our species is to get better things to more people  – products with spirit and creativity.
~ Steve Jobs

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
~ Steve Jobs

Stay hungry, stay foolish.
~ Steve Jobs

It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
~ Steve Jobs

It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy.
~ Steve Jobs

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful … that’s what matters to me.
~ Steve Jobs

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
~ Steve Jobs

I want to put a ding in the universe.
~ Steve Jobs

Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.
~ Steve Jobs

Let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday.
~ Steve Jobs

Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.
~ Steve Jobs

I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.
~ Steve Jobs

Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.
~ Steve Jobs

If today were the last of your life, would you do what you were going to do today?
~ Steve Jobs

It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.
~ Steve Jobs

It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
~ Steve Jobs

To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about.
~ Steve Jobs

Invest time in yourself to have great experiences that are going to enrich you.
~ Steve Jobs

The most important thing is a person. A person who incites and feeds your curiosity; and machines cannot do that in the same way that people can.
~ Steve Jobs

Illustrated quotes used with permission of Positively Present. Follow, and become a Patreon!

Short Creativity Quotes

I love short, tweetable quotes. Short is also the perfect length to make picture quotes!

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

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

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
~ Sylvia Plath

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

The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity.
~ Dan Stevens

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
~ Erich Fromm

The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.
~ Pablo Picasso

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life.
~ Sophia Loren

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.
~ Edwin Land

Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out.
~ David Duchovny

Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.
~ James Russell Lowell

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.
~ T. S. Eliot

Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is.
~ Mason Cooley

Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.
~ Jean Dubuffet

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

Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity.
~ Bo Bennett

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

If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too.
~ Jimmy Buffett

Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas.
~ Donatella Versace

Let us be about setting high standards for life, love, creativity, and wisdom.
~ Greg Anderson

Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
~ Charles Mingus

Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing.
~ Edward de Bono

When we are angry or depressed in our creativity, we have misplaced our power.
~ Julia Margaret Cameron

Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm.
~ Earl Nightingale

Creativity is the greatest expression of liberty.
~ Bryant H. McGill

You might also like these freedom quotes.

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
~ Eric Hoffer

Creativity takes courage.
~ Henri Matisse

It was anger more than anything else that had set me off, roused me into productivity and creativity.
~ Mary Garden

Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life.
~ Daisaku Ikeda

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.
~ John Updike

Energy is the key to creativity. Energy is the key to life.
~ William Shatner

Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.
~ Edwin Land

People have a God-given right to use their creativity to produce things that improve our lives.
~ Paul Ryan

Creativity is what helps me escape a lot of my inner demons.
~ Demi Lovato

I go wherever my creativity takes me.
~ Lil Wayne

Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.
~ Dee Hock

I try to manage my day by my circadian rhythms because the creativity is such an elusive thing.
~ Scott Adams

The artistry and the creativity in a story are better than any drugs.
~ Wentworth Miller

Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience.
~ Masaru Ibuka

Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar.
~ Nnamdi Azikiwe

Punishing honest mistakes stifles creativity.
~ Ross Perot

To be creative means to be in love with life.
~ Osho

You might want to check out these love yourself quotes.

The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
~ Julia Cameron

Can’t kills creativity!
~ Camille Paglia

Creativity itself doesn’t care at all about results – the only thing it craves is the process.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity.
~ Yoko Ono

The heart and soul of the company is creativity and innovation.
~ Robert Iger

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

Politics is the art of the possible; creativity is the art of the impossible.
~ Ben Okri

We have the capacity for infinite creativity.
~ Jackie Gleason

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.
~ Bill Moyers

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

I’ve found constancy and balance between creativity and normality.
~ Julian Lennon

It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation.
~ Herman Melville

Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.
~ Gail Sheehy

A creative life is an amplified life.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I don’t know what I think until I write about it.
~ Joan Didion

Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.
~ Theodore Levitt

Creativity is the natural order of life.
~ Julia Cameron

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
~ Scott Adams

Without freedom, there is no creation.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Creative living is where Big Magic will always abide.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Every day is an opportunity to be creative.
~ Innerspace

Creativity can solve almost any problem.
~ George Lois

Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.
~ Pablo Picasso

Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try.
~ Dr. Seuss

Have you seen this huge collection of short motivational quotes?

There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all.
~ Edward de Bono

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.
~ Brene Brown

The creative person is willing to live with ambiguity.
~ Abe Tannenbaum

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
~ Victor Hugo

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.
~ Peter F. Drucker

Creativity is a drug I cannot live without.
~ Cecil B. DeMille

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it.
~ Nikos Kazantzakis

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

You do not need anybody’s permission to live a creative life.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
~ John F. Kennedy

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

You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.
~ Jack London

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
~ Bertrand Russell

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
~ Joseph Chilton Pierce

Life is trying things to see if they work.
~ Ray Bradbury

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
~ John Maynard Keynes

A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations.
~ Gerald G. Jampolsky

It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.
~ Jean-Luc Godard

If you’re alive, you’re a creative person.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
~ Oscar Wilde

Truly creative people care a little about what they have done, and a lot about what they are doing.
~ Alan Cohen

Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
~ Julia Cameron

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.
~ Pablo Picasso

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.
~ Voltaire

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.
~ Leo Burnett

Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source.
~ Julia Cameron

Leap, and the net will appear.
~ Julia Cameron

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.
~ Salvador Dali

I dream my painting and I paint my dream.
~ Vincent Van Gogh

You might also enjoy these famous artist quotes.

Funny Creativity Quotes

A creative play on words can make you think – or laugh! Just like these creative funny quotes.

Art is anything you can get away with.
~ Andy Warhol

An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.
~ Oscar Wilde

Doors are for people with no imagination.
~ Derek Landy

That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.
~ Ray Bradbury

Why fit in when you were born to stand out?
~ Dr. Seuss

When you reach for the stars, you might not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.
~ Leo Burnett

Done is better than good.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert

There is no such thing as a new idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.
~ Mark Twain

Have no fear of perfection. You’ll never reach it.
~ Salvador Dali

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
~ John Steinbeck

The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.
~ G.K. Chesterton

I’ve always felt that the best whips and chains are in the mind. With a little creativity, the physical ones are hardly necessary.
~ Jim Butcher

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.
~ Neil Gaiman

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

There is no healthier drug than creativity.
~ Nayyirah Waheed

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
~ Pablo Picasso

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
~ Saul Bellow

The best way out is always through.
~ Robert Frost

Instead of thinking outside the box, get rid of the box.
~ Deepak Chopra

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.
~ Napoleon Hill

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
~ Oscar Wilde

The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.
~ David Foster Wallace

Every act of creation begins with an act of destruction.
~ Pablo Picasso

If a composer suffers from loss of sleep and his sleeplessness induces him to turn out masterpieces, what a profitable loss it is!
~ Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

Samuel Clemens was a master of wit! Laugh with these famous Mark Twain quotes.

Funny Sayings About Creativity

More funny words about creativity! I couldn’t trace the authors for these.

Creative minds are rarely tidy.

Creativity fills my life.
… and my walls.
… and my closets.
… and my drawers…

The biggest ideas started on a cocktail napkin.

Creativity is messy and I am very creative!

Working on my PHD in creative arts.
(Projects Half Done)

Creative people don’t have a mess.
They have ideas lying around everywhere!

Weekend Forecast:
Crafting with a chance of chocolate.

Creativity is magical, not magic!

Keep calm and craft on.

For more clever wordplays, check out 200 paraprosdokians.

Creative Quotes on Life

Creativity isn’t just for artists! I believe everyone is creative, and should find their way to express it.

The world really need more creative thinkers.

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

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
~ George Bernard Shaw

The only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world will be born of our creativity.
~ Brené Brown

What keeps life fascinating is the constant creativity of the soul.
~ Deepak Chopra

Creativity Quotes About Being Different

If everyone is creative, how are creative people different?

Because everyone is different, if we express our true selves.

This first quote sums it up best:

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
~ Oscar Wilde

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

Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.
~ Osho

Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.
~ Dorothy Parker

Creativity is more than just being different.
~ Charles Mingus

Creativity Quotes for Students & Educators

Schools should foster and encourage creativity in our bright young minds, not stifle it. They are our future!

We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives preparing for examinations.
~ Freeman Dyson

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

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

Routine kills creative thought.
~ Scarlett Thomas

Quotes on Creativity: Conclusion

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Here are more useful resources:

You might enjoy learning how to use Inspirational Quotes on social media to create posts that engage your audience.

To make your favorite quotes into graphics, try these best Canva Alternatives.

This page of the best quote sites has links to quotes collections for every reason and season.

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