Updated 1/28/05

In the words of others - notable thoughts related to creativity

The differences between fantasy and imagination

. . .The Greek word for imagination is fantasia, which translates as "fantasy". Fantasy and imagination came to be seen as one and the same thing. "The imagination," writes Alan Ecclestone, "brings the whole soul into activity, unlike fantasy which is one-dimensional: it plays without paying anything for them. Fantasy is not costly, whereas the imagination is strenuous. Holding things together is hard work."

Lauren Artress Walking a sacred path

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller

Community.

Somewhere, there are people to whom we speak with passion

without having the words catch in our throats.

Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us,

eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us

whenever we come into our own power.

Community means strength that joins our strength

to do the work that needs to be done.

Arms to hold us when we falter.

A healing circle.

A circle of friends.

Someplace where we can be free.

Starhawk - Dreaming the Dark

Learning

is finding out

what you already know.

Doing is demonstrating that

you know it.

Teaching is reminding others

that they know it just as well as you.

Richard Bach, Illusions

Genuine beginnings begin within us, even when they are brought to our attention by external forces.

William Bridges

Creativity is sensing the potentialities of a child - and then helping that child attain them.

E. Paul Torrance

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Walter Bagehot

The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Mark Twain

It takes courage to be creative, just as soon as you have a new idea, you're in the minority of one.

E. Paul Torrance

True creativeness fulfills at least three conditions. It involves a response or an idea that is novel or at the very least statistically infrequent. But novelty or originality of thought and action, while a necessary aspect of creativity is not sufficient . . . it must to some extent be adaptive, to, or of, reality. It must serve to solve a problem, fit a situation, or accomplish some recognizable goal. And, thirdly, true creativeness involves a sustaining of the original insight, an evaluation and elaboration of it, a developing of it to the full.

MacKinnon, 1962

Creative thinking is much more than using your imagination to crank out lots of new ideas. Creative thinking is a lifestyle, a personality trait, a way of perceiving the world, a way of interacting with other people, and a way of living and growing. Living creatively is developing your talents, tapping your unused potential, and becoming what you are capable of becoming. Being creative is exploring new places and new ideas. Being creative is developing a sensitivity to problems of others and problems of humankind. And being creative is using your imagination to crank out lots of new ideas to solve those problems.

Davis, 1981

All of us are both creatures and creators, but we vary both in our quality as a creation and in our power to create.

Great original thoughts or ideas are those which are not only new to the person who thinks them but new to almost everyone. These rare contributions are creative in perhaps a stronger sense of the term; they not only are the results of a creative act, but they themselves in turn create new conditions of human existence. The theory of relativity was such a creative act; so was the invention of the wheel. Both resulted in new forms of power, and human life was changed thereby.

Creative power of a outstanding order is marked by the voluminous production of acts which can claim a notable degree of originality, and the occasional productions of acts of radical originality.

Barron, 1969

The child we were and are learns by exploring and experimenting, insistently snooping into every little corner that is open to us--and into the forbidden corners too! But sooner or later our wings get clipped. The real world created by grown-ups comes to bear down upon growing children, molding them into progressively more predictable members of society. This devolutionary process is reinforced throughout the life cycle, from kindergarten through university, in social and political life, and most especially in the world of work. Our newest and most powerful educational institutions, television and pop music, are even more thorough than school in inculcating mass-produced conformity. People are grown as a kind of food to be gobbled up by the system. Slowly our eyes begin to narrow. Thus the simplicity, intelligence, and power of mind at play become homogenized into complexity, conformity, and weakness.

We need to recognize that every bit of our culture is school; we are presented moment to moment with affirmation of some realities and denials of others. Education, business, media, politics, and above all family, the very institutions that might be the instruments for expanding human expressiveness, collide to induce conformism, to keep things going in a humdrum level. But so do our everyday habits of doing and seeing. Reality as we know it becomes conditioned by tacit assumptions we come to take for granted after innumerable subtle learning experiences in daily life. That is why creative perceptions seem extraordinary or special to us, when in fact creativity is usually a matter of seeing through those tacit assumptions to what is right in front of our noses.... 116-117

Stephen Nachmanovitch - Free Play