Inspiring Quotes for Creatives (Yes, even you)
This blog post is dedicate to creatives everywhere. The world needs you!
I’ve curated a list of inspiring quotes that will hopefully motivate and inspire the creative in you.
Be sure to save this blog post so you can come back at any time!
“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live only as you can.”
- Neil Gaiman
“The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”
- William James
“I paint flowers so they will not die.”
- Frida Kahlo
“The creative adult is the child who survived.”
– Ursula Le Guin
“Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take risks.”
- Mark Rothko
“If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle.”
- Albrecht Dürer
“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.”
- Rita Mae Brown
“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.”
– Bruce Lee
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."
– Maya Angelo
“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
– Jack London
“The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”
- James Baldwin
“The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.”
- Paul Strand
“If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.”
- Marc Chagall
“In any creative industry, the fact that others are moving in a certain direction is always proof positive, at least to me, that a new direction is the only direction.”
- George Lois
“Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s anchor. We are the compass for humanity’s conscience.”
- Harry Belafonte
“To try and fail is at least to learn. To fail to try is to suffer the loss of what might have been”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Our dreams and creativity can rewrite the narratives of our future.”
— Mari Copeny
“The creative adult is the child who survived.”
- Ursula Le Guin
“We need musicians and storytellers to bring healing to our culture, and we need that now, more than ever.”
— Chloé S. Valdary
“People who live in fear of others stealing their ideas generally don’t have many good ideas. Creativity is abundant. Execution is scarce. What prevails is not the best idea but the best implementation.”
— Adam Grant
“Art is a group of highly sensitive people reporting back what reality is like for them.”
— Pete Holmes
“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
– Leonardo Da Vinci
“Overthinking the process will kill any career in the creative space. You just have to do, not think.”
— Casey Neistat
“Sometimes the creativity is in the rest.”
— Joshua Kissi
“Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.”
— Bruce Garrabrandt
“You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.”
— Richard Bach
“The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.”
— Sarah Ban Breathnach
“Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.”
– Austin Kleon
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
– Vincent Van Gogh
”There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun.”
– Pablo Picasso
“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.”
– Neil Gaiman
“The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world. Then he hopes to attract others into it. He hopes to impose his particular vision and share it with others. And when the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth the pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end. When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.”
— Anaïs Nin
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
- Arthur Ashe
“Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.”
- Oprah Winfrey
“Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”
- Pablo Picasso
"You use a glass mirror to see your face. You use works of art to see your soul."
- George Bernard Shaw
“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
– Sylvia Plath
“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.”
– Mary Lou Cook
“Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.”
- Jim Rohn
“You can be cautious or you can be creative, but there's no such thing as a cautious creative.”
– George Lois