Great Quotes About Art, Imagination and Creativity

If you walk into my home, you're going to find quotes about art and all things art related all over my walls. Some of them are framed, some simply wrote on a piece of canvas with a decorative hand, while others have been jotted down on a yellow pad waiting my decision on what to do with them. For a long time I often wondered if I was the only one to do this, but in the past few years I've had the opportunity to visit the homes of other artists I know only to find very similar circumstances. Some had less art quotes, some more and some only had copies of paintings or pieces of original artwork hanging on their walls. The point is that I felt a kind of kinship with these other "creative minds" that I hardly ever feel with anyone else. Below are some my favorite quotes on art; I hope you find a few new ones for yourself.

Artwork courtesy of Adriane Dizon / flickr.

1-An artist cannot talk about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture. ~Jean Cocteau

2-It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet. ~Kojiro Tomita

3-An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one. ~Charles Horton Cooley

4-Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. ~Sir Cecil Beaton

5-The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist. The beginner’s humility and openness lead to exploration. Exploration leads to accomplishment. All of it begins at the beginning, with the first small and scary step. ~Julia Cameron

6-Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. ~G.K. Chesterton

7-Man will begin to recover the moment he takes art as seriously as physics, chemistry or money. ~Ernst Levy

8-Art is whatever you can get away with. ~John Cage

9-God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things. ~Pablo Picasso

10-The best way to help people to maximize their creative potential is to allow them to do something they love. ~Teresa Amabile

11-Face new challenges, seize new opportunities, test your resources against the unknown and in the process, discover your own unique potential. ~John Amatt

12-Art opens the closets, airs out the cellars and attics. It brings healing. ~Julia Cameron

13-Creative minds have always been know to survive any kind of bad training. ~Anna Freud

14-Mortals must do what they are here to do creatively or they will become cranky. ~Jill Badonsky

15-What is now proved was once only imagined. ~William Blake

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16-Creativity flourishes when we have a sense of safety and self-acceptance. ~Julia Cameron

17-Dancing is the body made poetic. ~Ernst Bacon

18-Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. ~Pablo Picasso

19-You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. ~Maya Angelou

20-Most people live and die with their music still unplayed. They never dare to try. ~Mary Kay Ash

21-Creativity does not depend on inherited talent or on environment or upbringing; it is the function of the ego of every human being. ~Silvano Arieti

22-The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so, in a sense, it is all about potential. ~Steve Ballmer

23-Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. ~Scott Adams

24-I'm creative, you can't expect me to be neat too. ~Unknown

25-The question of common sense is always what is it good for? A question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage. ~James Russell Lowell

26-People will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction and challenge of the work itself. ~Teresa M. Amabile

27-During every really creative act, the artist finds himself homeless. To overcome this state he has to call up his last reserves of strength. ~Asger John

28-The first step to being creative is to get rid of your own unwritten rules. ~Mary M. Byers

29-The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person. ~Frank Barron

30-There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. ~Ansel Adams

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31-Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. ~G.K. Chesterton

32-Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got. ~Steven Pressfield

33-The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist. ~Robert Brault

34-For the mystic what is how. For the craftsman how is what. For the artist what and how are one. ~William McElcheran

35-The trouble with having an open mind, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~Terry Pratchett

And everything associated with it.

36-Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand. ~Neil Armstrong

37-A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something. ~Frank Capra

38-I believe talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. ~Maya Angelou

39-There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. ~Maya Angelou

40-We are all creative. Creativity is the hallmark human capacity that has allowed us to survive thus far. Our brains are wired to be creative, and the only thing stopping you from expressing the creativity that is your birthright is your belief that there are creative people and uncreative people and that you fall in that second category. ~Shelly Carson

41-Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity. ~T.S. Eliot

42-The sorcery and charm of imagination, and the power it gives to the individual to transform his world into a new world of order and delight, makes it one of the most treasured of all human capacities. ~Frank Barron

43-The man who has no imagination has no wings. ~Mohammad Ali

44-An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. ~Edwin Land

45-Success if fickle, but creativity is a gift. ~Tommy Shaw

46-It is in awareness that we bring everything to life that lives within us. There is no time like the present to give birth to creativity. ~Kathleen Anderson

47-Play produces feelings of pleasure which help you escape two major creativity killers - stress and self-consciousness. ~Jordan Ayan

48-True creativity is impossible without some measure of passion. ~Teresa Amabile

49-All the other colors are just colors, but purple seems to have a soul. Purple is not just a noun and an adjective but also a verb - when you look at it, it's looking back at you. ~Uniek Swain

50-Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. ~Henry Ward Beecher