Creating things is hard. Even the most accomplished artists suffer from creative block.
Sometimes, the best way to boost your creativity is to borrow inspiration from other artists.
Here are 52 quotes from amazing artists, writers, and thinkers to get you out of that creative rut.
52 quotes about creativity to inspire and motivate you
1. “Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.” – Bruce Garrabrandt
2. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
3. “To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.” – Kurt Vonnegut
4. “The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.” – Pablo Picasso
5. “Creativity involves breaking out of expected patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” – Edward de Bono
6. “Create with the heart; build with the mind.” – Criss Jami
7. “Creativity is a continual surprise.” – Ray Bradbury
8. “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.” – David Ogilvy
9. “Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse
10. “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” – Pablo Picasso
11. “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath
12. “Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.” – Austin Kleon
13. “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” – Oscar Wilde
14. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.” – Brené Brown
15. “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams
16. “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” – Erich Fromm
17. “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.” – Mary Shelley
18. “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol
19. “That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.” – Ray Bradbury
20. “What keeps life fascinating is the constant creativity of the soul.” – Deepak Chopra
21. “The creative adult is the child who survived.” – Ursula Le Guin
22. “What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.” – Austin Kleon
23. “In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” – Rollo May
24. “You don’t make art out of good intentions.” – Gustave Flaubert
25. “To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head – and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It’s an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but that’s not the most important thing. It’s the work itself.” – Alan Moore
26. “Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.” – Leonard Bernstein
27. “Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.” – Virginia Woolf
28. “Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.” – Steve Jobs
29. “Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.” – Max Ernst
30. “Non-judgment quiets the internal dialogue, and this opens once again the doorway to creativity.” – Deepak Chopra
31. “Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” – Leo Burnett
32. “Pretend to be making something until you actually make something.” – Austin Kleon
33. “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.” – George Bernard Shaw
34. “Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” – Ray Bradbury
35. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” – Pablo Picasso
36. “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” – Robert Henri
37. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” – Stephen King
38. “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” – John Maynard Keynes
39. “Creativity is a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.” – Arthur Koestler
40. “Imagination is only intelligence having fun.” – George Scialabbe
41. “Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.” – Gail Sheehy
42. “Show up, show up, show up, and after a while, the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up.” – Isabel Allende
43. “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light, and shadows.” – Jim Jarmusch
44, “The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.” – Auguste Rodin
45. “Every artist was first an amateur.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
46. “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” – Bob Ross
47. “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.” – Oscar Wilde
48. “Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” – Mary Lou Cook
49. “The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” – Alan Alda
50. The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions.” – Antony Jay
51. “The creative person is willing to live with ambiguity. He doesn’t need problems solved immediately and can afford to wait for the right ideas.” – Abe Tannenbaum
52. “In the end, creativity isn’t just the things we choose to put in, it’s the things we choose to leave out.” – Austin Kleon
