5 Quotes to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing Think your line of business doesn't need creativity? Think again! Every entrepreneur needs imagination to thrive.
By Adam Toren
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Creativity is the thing that fuels your life's work. The great thing about creativity is that it can come in many forms. It isn't just limited to the traditional things such as art or music.
Your life is your work of art and creativity is the fuel that innovates, creates solutions and fuels change for a better world.
Related: Powerful Ways to Overcome Creative Block
Here are five quotes to jump-start your creativity from some of the best creative leaders in history.
Others have seen what is and asked why? I have seen what could be and asked why not? -- Pablo Picasso, artist
Any real change in our world has come from those individuals who looked at life and questioned it, as Picasso suggests. The Wright Brothers dared to ask why we couldn't fly and found a way.
The founding fathers of America risked everything with their questions of a free and independent country from the British empire. The great visionaries and leaders are creative in the way they think and are never satisfied with the status quo.
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions. -- Albert Einstein, scientist
It is easy to look at the artists of the world and think they're the only brains that see the creativity of life, but scientists and physicists look at life from a creative angle as well. They approach formulas, theories and what's been discovered to push the limits of our understanding.
From the cosmos to the building blocks of DNA, their creative minds approach life as something to be further explored and discovered. Don't think just because your work isn't traditionally artistic that creativity isn't crucial.
If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. -- Ken Robinson, author and educator
If you haven't heard Robinson's incredible TED talk, "How Schools Kill Creativity," you're missing out on what 27 million other viewers already know: the author and educator is pretty amazing. Robinson is a great advocate for encouraging creativity and consults education systems and governments around the world about the importance of maintaining our creative practice.
Related: You Have Good Ideas -- Don't Let Them Disappear
You may learn as a child you aren't "good" at drawing and give up on creativity. However, the point isn't necessarily to be judged as good or bad but to keep creating. Don't let judgments, your own or others, hold you back from a continuous approach to creativity. It will serve you your whole life in more ways than just entrepreneurship.
Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people. -- Leo Burnett, business leader
Burnett is often referred to as one of the most creative men in the advertising business. Why? His passion for life. Burnett makes a compelling argument: that the more you love life and want to explore all facets of this human experience, the more creative you will probably be.
Focusing on creativity in business is important, but how are you looking beyond business to get your creativity going? You may want to consider taking up a creative practice outside your normal routine and exploring what's out there in the world. Thanks to sites such as Meetup, there are definitely some kind of creative things happening in your neck of the woods to explore.
Being curious about all of life will spark creativity in unusual ways for your business, too.
Creativity is just connecting things. 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. It seemed obvious to them after a while. -- Steve Jobs, former Apple CEO
For a man who changed the way we all approach, access and interact with electronics, Jobs was certainly connecting many things. Perhaps that is what makes curiosity about life and creativity in everything so exciting: your brain may just make connections that surprise you one day.
