You are here: Creative Absolute Mechanisms of creative dialogue with the World Psychology of Creativity
1. Sergey L. Markov. Kvintological approach to the construction of a unified theory of creativity
Markov, S.L. (2012). Kvintologichnyi pidhid do pobudovy edynoi teorii tvorchosti [Kvintological approach to the construction of a unified theory of creativity]. Pravnychyi visnyk universitetu “KROK”, 11, 160 -171.
2. Sergey L. Markov. Сreative approach to security management
Markov, S.L. (2012) Tvorcheskiy podhod k upravleniiu bezopasnostiu [ Сreative approach to security management]. Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii obrazovaniia [News of the Russian Academy of Education]. 2 (22), 403-415.
3. Sergey L. Markov. Creative management and management of creativity in the modern creatological formation
Markov, S.L. (2015) Tvorche upravlinia i upravlinia tvorchistiu v novitniy kreatologichnit formacii [Creative management and management of creativity in the modern creatological formation] In V.K. Gizhevskiy, S.L. Markov (Eds.), Legal and socio-psychological dimensions of modern information society (pp. 252-266). Кyiv: KROK University.
4. Sergey L. Markov. Formation of creative vision of an individual as the universal method of enhancing creativity
Markov, S.L. (2011) Formuvannia tvorchogo bachennia osobystosti jak universalnyi metod aktivizacii tvorchosti [Formation of creative vision of an individual as the universal method of enhancing creativity]. In S.D. Maksimenko & L.M. Karamushka (Eds.), Actualni problemy psichologii. Vol 1. (pp. 374-380). Kyiv: Publishing House “A.C.K”.
5. Sergey L. Markov. A genetic approach to the nature of genius
Markov, S.L.(2011) Genetuchnyi pidhid do pryrody genialnosti [A genetic approach to the nature of genius]. In 2th International scientific conference: Genesis of the personality's existence. Kyiv, 19-20 December 2011. Kyiv: Information and Analytical Agency, Vol.1, pp.255-260.
6. Sergey L. Markov. Mechanisms of creative dialogue with the World
Markov, S. L. (1997) Mechanisms of Creative Dialogue With the World. Paper presented at the 105th annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, August 17, 1997. Chicago, IL.
7. Sergey L. Markov. Sense creation in the structure of processes of meaning dynamics
Markov, S.L. (2013). Smyslotvorchist v structuri procesiv smyslovoi dynamiki [Sense creation, in the structure of processes of meaning dynamics]. Pravnychyi visnyk universitetu “KROK”, 15, 183-192.
8. Sergey L. Markov. Personal mechanisms of sense creation
Markov, S.L. Osobystisni mechanizmy smyslotvorchosti [Personal mechanisms of sense creation]. Pravnychyi visnyk universitetu “KROK”, 16. P.265-274
Sergey L. Markov. Kvintological approach to the construction of a unified theory of creativity
Abstract. The model and method for the construction of unified theory of creativity are proposed. The universal principle of the centered penta-structure was laid in the base of the theory formation. This principle allows to construct the system of coherent measurements and categories of creativity and to present a classical model of creativity in the form 4Ps / S - process, product, person, place as well as the sense which generates and integrates them. The deployment of these central categories leads to the creation of such relevant specific theories of creativity as a problem-solving process, productive activity, self-actualization, creative dialogue, creative vision and sensecreation.
Key words: unified theory of creativity, methodological grounds, kvintological approach, pentabasis, model of creativity.
Markov, S.L. (2012). Kvintological pidhid do pobudovy edynoi teorii tvorchosti [Kvintological approach to the construction of a unified theory of creativity]. Pravnychyi visnyk universitetu “KROK”, 11, 160 -171.
Sergey L. Markov. Mechanisms of Creative Dialogue with the World
Markov, S. L. (1997) Mechanisms of Creative Dialogue With the World. Paper presented at the 105th annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, August 17, 1997. Chicago, IL.
Abstract. The variant of theoretical framework that helps to harmonize and simplify modern creativity theory is suggested. The given conception is based on the idea of universal nature of creativity, and the existence of definite invariant evolutionary principles and mechanisms.
The framework is built on such universal categories as Interaction, Dialogue and Game. The answer to the question is not only “Where is? “, but both “How is?” creativity is proposed . Thus a hierarchical system of mechanisms is outlined to account for the creative dialogue that may occur between personality and the objective world. It is proposed that every level of creative interaction manifests itself through opposite, mutual complement pairs. These interactions constitute the workings of the mechanisms and include:
The axiological (Idealization vs. Problematization), cognitive (Decentration vs. Simplification), emotional (Identification vs. Meditation), behavioural (Self-actualization vs. Personification).
This unified system of opposite mechanisms manifests itself as a “double helix of creativity” and allows to consider process of bringing into existence as an assembly of complement elements and constructing to the whole.
The system of connected mechanisms allows the creative vision. It is an integral part of the creative attitude toward the world. It can serve as an effective method for the finding and solving of diverse life problems and conflicts, as a method of stimulating creative activity, or as a form of creative self-training and meditation.
Key words: framework for creativity, theories of creativity, creative dialogue, creative mechanisms, double helix of creativity
Creativity comes from awakening and directing men's higher natures, which originate in the primal depths of the universe and are appointed by Heaven.
I Ching (12th с. BC, Book of Changes, Chinese classic text)
The Creative knows the great beginnings. The Receptive completes the finished things.
I Ching
Great indeed is the sublimity of the Creative, to which all beings owe their beginning and which permeates all heaven
I Ching
Turn yourself not away from three best things: Good Thought, Good Word, and Good Deed.
Zoroaster (c.628 - c.551 BC) Persian spiritual teacher and philosopher
I am not an originator but a transmitter.
Confucius (551 - 479 BC), Chinese spiritual teacher and philosopher
He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.
Confucius
The Essence of Knowledge is, having it, to use it.
Confucius
Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.
Confucius
Where so ever you go, go with all your heart.
Confucius
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
Confucius
Great indeed is the sublimity of the Creative, to which all beings owe their beginning and which permeates all heaven.
Laozi (6c. BC), Chinese spiritual teacher and philosopher
From wonder into wonder existence opens.
Laozi
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
Laozi
The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.
Laozi
Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.
Laozi
Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.
Laozi
For the wise man looks into space and he knows there is no limited dimensions.
Laozi
Silence is a source of Great Strength.
Laozi
To see things in the seed, that is genius.
Laozi
Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
Laozi
The master observes the world but trusts his inner vision. He allows things to come and go. He prefers what is within to what is without.
Laozi
As soon as you have made a thought, Laugh at it.
Laozi
Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?
Sun Tzu (c. 544-496 BC), Chinese military general and philosopher, the author of The Art of War
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
Sun Tzu
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
Sun Tzu
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we create the world.
The Buddha(563 - 483 BC), Indian spiritual teacher and philosopher
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
Heraclitus ( c. 535 – c. 475 BCE), Greek philosopher
If you do not the expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.
Heraclitus
The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony.
Heraclitus
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
Socrates (c. 469 BC – 399 BC), Greek philosopher
The poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each one possessed by the divinity to whom he is in bondage.
Plato (427–347 BC), Greek philosopher
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”
Plato
The deity on purpose [sings] the liveliest of all lyrics through the most miserable poet.
Plato
Life must be lived as play.
Plato
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), Greek philosopher
The soul never thinks without a picture.
Aristotle
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
Great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart.
Meng-Tse (Mencius) (372 – 289 BC), Chinese Confucian philosopher
He who attends to his greater self becomes a great man, and he who attends to his smaller self becomes a small man.
Meng-Tse
Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 4 BC – AD 65), Roman Stoic philosopher
Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let if first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
Epictetus (55–135 AD), Greek Stoic philosopher
The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work, but in the excellence of the work he produces.
Thomas Aquinas (January 28, 1225 –March 7, 1274), Italian Dominican priest, philosopher and theologian
Stillness is where creativity and solutions are found.
Meister Johann Eckhart (c. 1260 – c. 1327), German theologian, philosopher and mystic
The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.
Meister Eckhart
Children at play are not playing about. Their games should be seen as their most serious minded activity.
Michel de Montaigne (February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592), French writers
If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must expect to employ methods never before attempted.
Francis Bacon (January 22, 1561 –April 9, 1626), English philosopher
A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
Francis Bacon
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Francis Bacon
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon
Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.
René Descartes (March 31, 1596 –February 11, 1650), French philosopher and mathematician
Doubt is the origin of wisdom.
René Descartes
It is not enough to have a good mind, the main thing is to use it well.
René Descartes
If we do not find anything pleasant, at least we shall find something new.
Voltaire (November 21, 1694 –May 30, 1778), French Enlightenment philosopher
Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.
Voltaire
I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher.
Voltaire
All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us the by senses and experience.
David Hume (May 7, 1711 –August 25, 1776), Scottish philosopher
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712 –July 2, 1778), French philosopher and writer
All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.
Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 –February 12, 1804), German philosopher
Imagination is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature.
Kant
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.
Immanuel Kant
Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.
Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 –September 21, 1860), German philosopher
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.
Arthur Schopenhauer
I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Palestine, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, - the Genius and creative Principle of each and of all eras, in my own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American Transcendentalist philosopher, essayist
A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely… but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude …
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a happy talent to know how to play.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, without expression, tires.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The two terrors that discourage creativity and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Soren Kierkegaard (May 5, 1813 –November 11, 1855), Danish philosopher
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Søren Kierkegaard
It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
Søren Kierkegaard
The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.
Mikhail Bakunin (May 30, 1814 –July 1, 1876), Russian philosopher and revolutionary
If one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams, and endeavors to lead a life which they have imagined, they will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862), American poet, transcendentalist philosopher
The world is but a canvas to the imagination.
Henry David Thoreau
Our life is frittered away by detail ... Simplify, Simplify.
Henry David Thoreau
Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.
Henry David Thoreau
Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
Henry David Thoreau
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Henry David Thoreau
The struggle of maturity is to recover the seriousness of a child at play.
Friedrich Neitzsche (October 15, 1844 –August 25, 1900), German philosopher
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment.
Friedrich Nietzsche
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.
Friedrich Nietzsche
All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Has anyone...any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? ... There is an ecstasy such that the immese strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one's steps either rush or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes... Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.
Friedrich Nietzsche
One hears — one does not seek; one takes — one does not ask who gives.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.
Henri Bergson (October 18, 1859 –January 4, 1941), French philosopher
To perceive means to immobilize. . . we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.
Henri Bergson
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
Henri Bergson
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination.
John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952), American philosopher and psychologist
“…a problem well put is half solved.”
John Dewey
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead (February 15,1861 –December 30, 1947), English philosopher and mathematician
The 'silly' question is the first intimation of some totally new development.
Alfred North Whitehead
Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), Spanish-American philosopher and essayist
To the art of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well.
George Santayana
Culture arises and unfolds in and as play.
Johan Huizinga (December 7, 1872 – February 1, 1945), Dutch philosopher and historian
Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth'...Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory - it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe. I think that most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been a result of just such a moment.
Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872 –February 2, 1970), British philosopher
There are certain things that our age needs. It needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.
Bertrand Russell
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
Bertrand Russell
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Bertrand Russell
Creativity is the supreme mystery of life, the mystery of the appearance of something new, hitherto unknown, derived from nothing, proceeding from nothing, born of nothing other....
Nikolai Berdyaev (March 18, 1874 – March 24, 1948), Russian philosopher.
True life is creativity, not development: it is the freedom for creative acts, for creative fire, rather than necessity and the heaviness of congealing self-perfection.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Creativity is the mystery of freedom.
Nikolai Berdyaev
There is no objective reality. But there is only an illusion of consciousness, there is only an objectivication of reality, which was created by the spirit. The origin of life is creativity, freedom; and the personality, subject, and spirit are the representatives of that origin, but not the nature, not the object.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Philosophy… is the creative perception by the spirit of the meaning of human existence.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Dostoevsky - is not a realist as an artist, he is an experimentator, a creator of an experimential metaphysics of human nature.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Creativeness is liberation from slavery. Man is free when he finds himself in a state of creative activity. Creativeness leads to ecstasy of the moment. The products of creativeness are within time, but the creative act itself lies outside time.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Creativity is something which proceeds from within, out of immeasurable and inexplicable depths, not from without, not from the world's necessity. The very desire to make the creative act understandable, to find a basis for it, is failure to comprehend it. To comprehend the creative act means to recognize that it is inexplicable and without foundation.
Nikolai Berdyaev
In creativity the way will be found for subject to pass into object, the identity of subject with object will be restored. All the great creators have foreseen this turning-point. Today, in the depths of culture itself and in all its separate spheres, this crisis of creativity is ripening.
Nikolai Berdyaev
In every artistic activity a new world is created, the cosmos, a world enlightened and free.
Nikolai Berdyaev
But man as a person, the same man, gains mastery over egocentric self-confinement by disclosing a universe in himself…Personality is a universe, it is filled with universal content.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Self-realization is a process of permanent auto-creation, an elaboration of the new man at the expense of the old.
Nikolai Berdyaev
The essential in artistic creativity is victory over the burden of necessity. In art, man lives outside himself, outside his burdens, the burdens of life. Every creative artistic act is a partial transfiguration of life. In the artistic concept man breaks out through the heaviness of the world. In the creative-artistic attitude towards this world we catch a glimpse of another world.
Nikolai Berdyaev
We are standing on the threshold of a world-epoch of religious creativeness, on a cosmic divide.
Nikolai Berdyaev
…in the third epoch the divinity of man's creative nature is finally revealed and divine power becomes human power.
Nikolai Berdyaev
The geniuses have created, but they were less: the saints have been, but they created little…A twofold tragedy of creativeness reveals the truth that there has not yet been in our world a religious epoch of creativity.
Nikolai Berdyaev
It is imperative to bear in mind that human creativity is not a claim or a right on the part of man, but God's claim on and call to man. God awaits man's creative act, which is the response to the creative act of God.
Nikolai Berdyaev
This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul's creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being.
Martin Buber (February 8, 1878 – June 13, 1965) was an Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher
Creation happens to us, burns into us, changes us, we tremble and swoon, we submit. Creation – we participate in it, we encounter the creator, offer ourselves to him, helpers and companions.
Martin Buber
Creation happens to us, burns into us, changes us, we tremble and swoon, we submit. Creation - we participate in it, we encounter the creator, offer ourselves to him, helpers and companions.
Martin Buber
Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (May 1, 1881 – April 10, 1955), French philosopher and Jesuit priest
A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
Jacques Maritain (November 18, 1882 –April 28, 1973), French Catholic philosopher
The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.
Jose Ortega y Gasset (May 9, 1883 –October 18, 1955), Spanish philosopher
We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset
Freedom is only to be found where there is burden to be shouldered. In creative achievements this burden always represents an imperative and a need that weighs heavily upon man’s mood, so that he comes to be in a mood of melancholy. All creative action resides in a mood of melancholy, whether we are clearly aware of the fact or not, whether we speak at length about it or not. All creative action resides in a mood of melancholy, but this is not to say that everyone in a melancholy mood is creative.
Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976), German philosopher
The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats" and who can transform it in an original manner.
Martin Heidegger
Only when one thinks even much more madly than the philosophers can one solve their problems.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (April 26, 1889 –April 29,1951), Austrian-British philosopher
The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
All life is problem solving.
Karl R. Popper (July 28, 1902 –September 17, 1994), Austro-British philosopher
A successful work of art is not one which resolves contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure.
Theodore Adorno (September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969), German philosopher and sociologist
True creativity often starts where language ends.
Arthur Koestler (September 5, 1905 – March 1, 1983) was a Hungarian-Jewish novelist, philosopher, journalist
The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
Arthur Koestler
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and the pupil are located in the same individual.
Arthur Koestler
The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
Arthur Koestler
Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality.
Arthur Koestler
The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
Arthur Koestler
Creativity in science could be described as the act of putting two and two together to make five.
Arthur Koestler
The creativity and pathology of the human mind are, after all, two sides of the same medal coined in the evolutionary mint. The first is responsible for the splendour of our cathedrals, the second for the gargoyles that decorate them to remind us that the world is full of monsters, devils, and succubi.
Arthur Koestler
All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.
Albert Camus (November 7, 1913 –January 4, 1960), French philosopher
Great ideas, it is said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations a faint flutter of wings; the gentle stirring of life and hope.
Albert Camus
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.
Albert Camus
Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
Albert Camus
Do you train for passing tests or do you train for creative inquiry?
Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928), American linguist and philosopher
We do not see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
Humberto Maturana (born September 14, 1928), Chilean philosopher and biologist
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