"Art is not life, nor a reproduction of life, but a representation carried out within the specific terms, conversions and limitations of the particular art used. Hence absolute truth, with reference to objective fact, is not to be found in the business. The most realistic art is considerablely removed from reality. Art does not give real things or imitations of real things. The thing that art gives is strained first through the artist's selections and judgments, and then through the specific techniques with he used to present them. If you are to enjoy an art, you must first accept its terms."
Thomas Hart Benton
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
Albert Einstein
"There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience."
George-Louis De Buffon
"You can always spend a lot of money and drop a chandelier on people, but if you can break their hearts, then you've got something."
Ron Bohmer
"Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost."
Samuel Butler
Consider the late great English painter, Francis Bacon. He once told an interviewer that each of his paintings would only start to come together when he got disgusted with how bad it was, which would cause him to start throwing paint at the thing in despair.
"A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow."
Charles Brower
"Creativity often consists merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?"
Bernice Fitz-Gibbon
"Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better."
John Updike
"Without aesthetic, design is either the humdrum repetition of familiar clichés or a wild scramble for novelty. Without the aesthetic, the computer is but a mindless speed machine, producing effects without substance. Form without relevant content, or content without meaningful form."
Paul Rand
"Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people."
Leo Burnett
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
Douglas Adams
P.L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins books, put it best when she wrote, "You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for – if you are honest – you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity beings. It is all endless and all one."
"The real issue is not talent as an independent element, but talent in relationship to will, desire, and persistence. Talent without these things vanishes and even modest talent with those characteristics grows."
Milton Glaser
" A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist."
Louis Nizer
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
Howard Aiken
"A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on."
John F. Kennedy
"Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
The Dilbert Principle
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination."
Albert Einstein
Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.
Paul Rand
"You got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
Yogi Berra
"You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertising."
Norman Douglas
"The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything."
David Ogilvy, confessions of an advertising man
"I am still learning."
Michelangelo
"The designer does not, as a rule, begin with a preconceived idea. His idea is the result of subjective and objective thought, and the design a product of the idea. In order, therefore, to achieve an honest and effective solution he necessarily passes thought some sort of mental process ... Consciously or not, he analyzes, interprets, translates ... He improvises, invents new techniques and combinations. He coordinates and integrates his material so that he may restate his problem in terms of ideas, pictures, forms, and shapes. He unifies, simplifies, eliminates superfluities. He symbolizes ... abstract from his material by association and analogy. He intensifies and reinforces his symbol with appropriate accessories to achieve clarity and interest. He draws upon instinct and intuition. He considers the spectator, his feelings and predilections."
Paul Rand
Our educational system doesn't have exclusive rights on the guilt and anxiety associated with learning. Learning inherently involves some trauma; it requires a certain amount of exertion and implies giving up one way of thinking for another.
Richard Saul Wurman
The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge.
Seymour Papert
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."
Albert Einstein
"In marketing you must choose between boredom, shouting and seduction. Which do you want?"
Roy H. Williams
"Memory is a net: one that finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking."
Oliver Wendell Holmes
"We are more easily persuaded, in general, by the reason we ourselves discover than by those which are given by others."
Blaine Pascal
"Experiences the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward."
Anonymous
"Success is a journey, not a destination."
Ben Sweetland
"No one has a contract with God to succeed."
Tony Mikes
I will destroy my enemies by converting them to my friends.
Maimodes
"It is easy to be brave from a safe distance."
Aesop
"Nothing focuses the mind better than the constant sight of a competitor who wants to wipe you off the map."
Wayne Calloway
"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn¹t thinking."
General George S. Patton
"A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one."
Henry Ford
"It¹s a poor workman who blames his tools."
Unknown
"Whenever an individual or business decides that success has been attained, progress stops."
Thomas J. Watson Jr.
"Kites rise highest against the wind not with it."
Sir Winston Churchill
"Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is doing something else."
Tom Peters
If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?
Rumi
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk, This will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
Mark Twain
Good ideas are a dime a dozen...it's execution that counts.
Anon
Check out this book with quotes about design from designers: "Everything Reverberates: Thoughts on Design"
Theory into Practice
