Creativity Quotes Quotes

"True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist."

"The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person."

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."

"A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament."

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."

"No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist."

"Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse."

"Every artist was first an amateur."

"The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude."

"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."

"In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine."

"Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life."

"A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession."

"This world is but a canvas to our imagination."

"An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision."

"Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed."

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it."

"Pictures must not be too picturesque."

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home."

"An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness."

"We have art in order not to die of the truth."

"Art is the proper task of life."

"Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable."

"Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad."

"Art is not a thing it is a way."

"You don't take a photograph, you make it."

"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."

"A picture is a poem without words."

"Without freedom, no art art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others."

"The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination."

"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for."

"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."

"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands."

"An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have."

"The beginning is the most important part of the work."

"A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires."

"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web."

"An artist cannot fail it is a success to be one."

"Personality is everything in art and poetry."

"Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic."

"Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better."

"Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do."

"The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure."

"Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass."

"The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art."

"Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun."

"Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art."

"Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere."

"In art the best is good enough."

"Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling."

"The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it."

"I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning."

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary."

"Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century."

"All art is but imitation of nature."

"An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it."

"I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good."

"The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection."

"Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth."

"Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art."

"Even a true artist does not always produce art."

"An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world."

"If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye."

"Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still."

"To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it."

"Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality."

"A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears."

"I cry out for order and find it only in art."

"Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together."

"Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame."

"The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity."

"Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs."

"Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul."

"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept."

"The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress."

"Art is man's expression of his joy in labor."

"Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse."

"A great artist is always before his time or behind it."

"Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything."

"Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum."

"Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."

"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."

"When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art."

"Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first."

"I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own."

"Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time."

"The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture."

"Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed."

"Every good painter paints what he is."

"The history of art is the history of revivals."

"The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment."

"So vast is art, so narrow human wit."

"To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art men can only make us feel small in the wrong way."

"Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression."

"Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle."

"Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor."

"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event."

"Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art."

"The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts."

"Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century."

"My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art."

"Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake."

"What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit."

"To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist."

"Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them."

"I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good."

"Art is science made clear."

"Rules and models destroy genius and art."

"Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal."

"What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time."

"Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth."

"All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography."

"The task of art today is to bring chaos into order."

"Things are beautiful if you love them."

"I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things."

"The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist."

"Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men."

"Of all lies, art is the least untrue."

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution."

"Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal."

"The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist."

"A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds."

"Art is the daughter of freedom."

"Every artist writes his own autobiography."

"Great art picks up where nature ends."

"When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God."

"The perfection of art is to conceal art."

"My painting does not come from the easel."

"Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos."

"Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence."

"Art is a revolt against fate. All art is a revolt against man's fate."

"Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail."

"I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing."

"Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is."

"Wherever art appears, life disappears."

"I've never really had a hobby, unless you count art, which the IRS once told me I had to declare as a hobby since I hadn't made money with it."

"An artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs."

"The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor."

"The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box."

"I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me."

"I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need."

"The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above."

"Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product."

"To make pictures big is to make them more powerful."

"My hand is the extension of the thinking process - the creative process."

"That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind."

"The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke."

"Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home."

"I think about my work every minute of the day."

"Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture."

"By the work one knows the workman."

"Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms."

"My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see."

"Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist."

"The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep."

"Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies."

"The principle of art is to pause, not bypass."

"Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding."

"The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal."

"The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness."

"Trying to force creativity is never good."

"Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued."

"When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection."

"Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea."

"Vision is the true creative rhythm."

"No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language."

"The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public."

"In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death."

"Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game."

"The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing."

"I think an artist's responsibility is more complex than people realize."

"Painting is by nature a luminous language."

"A painting that is well composed is half finished."

"Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is."

"When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration."

"If a building becomes architecture, then it is art."

"Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul."

"Light in Nature creates the movement of colors."

"Art in Nature is rhythmic and has a horror of constraint."

"Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums."

"It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work."

"Photography is a major force in explaining man to man."

"The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract."

"Art is subject to arbitrary fashion."

"When I make art, I think about its ability to connect with others, to bring them into the process."

"You begin with the possibilities of the material."

"To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect."

"Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs."

"I think of my peace paintings as one long poem, with each painting being a single stanza."

"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process."

"Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty."

"Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in."

"I was the least Pop of all the Pop artists."

"I realize that protest paintings are not exactly in vogue, but I've done many."

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

"All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on."

"The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one."

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."

"Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art."

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being."

"Be true to yourself, help others, make each day your masterpiece, make friendship a fine art, drink deeply from good books - especially the Bible, build a shelter against a rainy day, give thanks for your blessings and pray for guidance every day."

"Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them for these only gave them life, those the art of living well."

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."

"The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough."

"Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us."

"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection."

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."

"All art is quite useless."

"I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art."

"There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face."

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."

"The art of love is largely the art of persistence."

"The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you."

"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him."

"It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art."

"What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying."

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

"Speak the truth, do not yield to anger give, if thou art asked for little by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods."

"A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind."

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."

"The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing."

"In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another."

"Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday."

"I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences."

"If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it."

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."

"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim."

"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."

"Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know."

"Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it."

"Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully."

"Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest."

"It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully."

"For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication."

"I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service."

"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing."

"Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist."

"When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art."

"Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day."

"Art raises its head where creeds relax."

"The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art."

"Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own."

"Politics is the art of controlling your environment."