Creativity quotes

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Christopher_Wolfgang_Alexander

Random Information Design

“The average designer scans whatever information he happens on, consults a consultant now and then when faced by extra-special difficulties, and introduces randomly selected information into forms otherwise dreamt up in the artist's studio of his mind.”

Herbert_George_Andrewartha

Model Making

“Model-making, the imaginative and logical steps which precede the experiment, may be judged the most valuable part of the scientific method because skill and insight in these matters are rare. Without them, we do not know what experiment to do. But it is the experiment which provides the raw material for scientific theory. Scientific theory cannot be built directly from the conclusions of conceptual models.”
  • Source: Herbert George Andrewartha, Introduction to the Study of Animal Population (1961), 181.

Jim_Baggott

The Theory Principle

“The Theory Principle. Although physical theories are constructed to describe empirical facts about reality, they are nevertheless founded on abstract mathematical (we could even say metaphysical) concepts. The process of abstraction from facts to theories is highly complex, intuitive and not subject to simple, universal rules applicable to all science for all time. In the act of scientific creation, any approach is in principle valid provided it yields a theory that works.”
  • Source: Baggott, Jim. Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth (p. 17). Pegasus Books. New York, NY.

Fred_Brooks

Programmer Poetry

“The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.”
  • Source: Brooks Jr., F. P. (1995). The Mythical Man-Month - Essays on Software Engineering (Anniversary Edition) | 1975/1995 (Anniv.). Boston. MA: Addison-Wesley. ISBN: 0201835959. Chapter 1, page 7.

Anthony_Burgess

Art Begins With Craft

“Art begins with craft, and there is no art until a craft has been mastered. You can't create unless you're willing to subordinate the creative impulse to the construction of a form. But the learning of a craft takes time, and we all think we're entitled to short cuts. Art is rare and sacred and hard work, and there ought to be a wall of fire around it.”
  • Source: Anthony Burgess (1986). But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?: Homage to Qwert Yuiop, and Other Writings, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi

Idea Selection and Production

“External forces are very important in determining which new ideas will be selected from among the many available; but they cannot explain their production.”
  • Source: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience“, chapter “The Rules of the Games of the Mind”, page 126. Original content published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics in 1990. Kindle edition published by Harper Collins in 2008. ISBN: 978-0061876721.

Tom_DeMarco and Tim_Lister

Kicking Ass

"Management is a complex enough thing to defy simple definition, but that nuance was lost on one senior manager we encountered at a professional society meeting in London. He summed up his entire view of the subject with this statement: 'Management is kicking ass.' This equates to the view that managers provide all the thinking and the people underneath them just carry out their bidding. Again, that might be workable for cheeseburger production, but not for any effort for which people do the work with their heads rather than their hands. Everyone in such an environment has got to have the brain in gear. You may be able to kick people to make them active, but not to make them creative, inventive, and thoughtful. Even if kicking people in the backside did boost their short-term productivity, it might not be useful in the long run. There is nothing more discouraging to any worker than the sense that his own motivation is inadequate and has to be 'supplemented' by that of the boss. The saddest thing about this management approach is that it’s almost always superfluous. You seldom need to take Draconian measures to keep your people working; most of them love their work. You may even have to take steps sometimes to make them work less, and thus get more meaningful work done."
  • Source: Book: Entitled: Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams. Edition: 3rd. Written by: Tom DeMarco; Tim Lister. Date published: 1987; 1999; 2013. Publisher: Addison-Wesley. Country: USA; GBR; CAN; DEU; FRA; ESP; ZAF; AUS; JPN; SGP; MEX. Language: en. ISBN: ISBN-13: 978-0-321-93411-6 (alk paper); 0-321-93411-3 (alk paper). Chapter: 2 (Make a Cheeseburger, Sell a Cheeseburger).

David_Deutsch

Decision Making

“It is a mistake to conceive of choice and decision-making as a process of selecting from existing options according to a fixed formula. That omits the most important element of decision-making, namely the creation of new options.”
  • Source: David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (2011).

Amending Data

“Amending the ‘data’, or rejecting some as erroneous, is a frequent concomitant of scientific discovery, and the crucial ‘data’ cannot even be obtained until theory tells us what to look for and how and why.”
  • Source: David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (2011).

Error Correction

“Without error-correction all information processing, and hence all knowledge-creation, is necessarily bounded. Error-correction is the beginning of infinity.”
  • Source: David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (2011).

Edsger_Wybe_Dijkstra

Programming Styles

“There are very different programming styles. I tend to see them as Mozart versus Beethoven. When Mozart started to write, the composition was finished. He wrote the manuscript and it was 'aus einem Guss' (from one cast). In beautiful handwriting, too. Beethoven was a doubter and a struggler who started writing before he finished the composition and then glued corrections onto the page. In one place he did this nine times. When they peeled them, the last version proved identical to the first one.”
  • Source: Dijkstra (2001) Source: Denken als discipline, a program from Dutch public TV broadcaster VPRO from April 10th, 2001 about Dijkstra.

Albert_Einstein

Intuition and Inspiration

“I believe in intuition and inspiration. ... At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”
  • Source: Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931) by Albert Einstein, p. 97; also in Transformation : Arts, Communication, Environment (1950) by Harry Holtzman, p. 138.

David_Epstein

Creativity

“There is, to be sure, no comprehensive theory of creativity.”
  • Source: David Epstein in the book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World”. Published 2019 by Riverhead Books. Chapter 9, page 198. ISBN 978-0735214484.

Keywords: Sure_quotes Comprehensive_quotes Theory_quotes Creativity_quotes

Creative Constraints

“That's the thing about constraints that spur creativity: They shut down many possibilities, but stimulate more varied and novel exploration of those that remain... Given complete freedom, our very strong urge is to follow the ‘path of least resistance.’ Specifically, we do only what we have done before, or follow the first example that jumps to mind.”
  • Source: David Epstein in the book “Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better”. Published 2026 by Riverhead Books. Page 58. ISBN 978-0593715734 (Ebook).

Haiku Way

“Haiku finds depth in the simple, and creativity in constraints that block the path of least resistance... Haiku is small, so you can try easily and iterate quickly. It is in present tense, so it forces you to be in the moment... Haiku is the simplest example of a helpful constraint... It is not a form, it is a way — an attitude. It is a way of being, of eagerly accepting unnecessary obstacles because of where they can lead.”
  • Source: David Epstein in the book “Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better”. Published 2026 by Riverhead Books. Page 233. ISBN 978-0593715734 (Ebook).

Samuel_C_Florman

Emotional Fulfillment

“The nature of engineering has been misconceived. Analysis, rationality, materialism, and practical creativity do not preclude emotional fulfillment; they are pathways to such fulfillment. They do not ‘reduce’ experience, as is so often claimed; they expand it. Engineering is superficial only to those who view it superficially. At the heart of engineering lies existential joy.”
  • Source: From the book “The Existential Pleasures of Engineering” by {Samuel C. Florman}. Second edition published in 1994 by {St. Martin's Press}, New York, NY. First edition published in 1976. Kindle edition published in 2023. E-book ISBN 978-1466842366. Chapter 8, page 101.

Gordon_Glegg

Engineers and Designers Are Human

“Throughout this book we have talked about 'designers' and 'engineers' and sought, by analysing their work, to find general and helpful maxims. But there is a danger in doing this, for we may forget that a 'designer' or 'engineer' is first and foremost a human being. A human being who designs or engineers has, in addition, a wide range of complicated and interacting emotions. It is easy to become emotionally involved in a new invention and so resent criticism of it even when that criticism, if heeded, would turn a failure into a success. Confidence may be blinded by conceit or undermined by an inferiority complex. History has shown that many new inventions were not inventions at all; they were re-inventions. The idea was not new but the determination to press through with it was. Character is the foundation of ability. Develop as large a safety margin as you can against such things as laziness, impatience, prejudice and arrogance and all the other human failings that inhibit constructive achievement in all spheres, especially that of creative engineering design.”
  • Source: Glegg, G. L. (1969). The Design of Design. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978-0-511-79996-9. Chapter 6, page 92.

Thomas_Gold

Knowledge Rules

“In no subject is there a rule, compliance with which will lead to new knowledge or better understanding. Skilful observations, ingenious ideas, cunning tricks, daring suggestions, laborious calculations, all these may be required to advance a subject. Occasionally the conventional approach in a subject has to be studiously followed; on other occasions it has to be ruthlessly disregarded. Which of these methods, or in what order they should be employed is generally unpredictable. Analogies drawn from the history of science are frequently claimed to be a guide; but, as with forecasting the next game of roulette, the existence of the best analogy to the present is no guide whatever to the future. The most valuable lesson to be learnt from the history of scientific progress is how misleading and strangling such analogies have been, and how success has come to those who ignored them.”
  • Source: Thomas Gold, 'Cosmology', in Arthur Beer (ed.), Vistas in Astronomy (1956), Vol. 2, 1722.

Donald_Hoffman

AI Computation

“If we look at an LLM [Large Language Model] or a future AI [Artificial Intelligence], it's going to be some kind of computational system. And computational systems have their limits. We have Gödel who said that at a minimum. I'm betting that you and I are avatars of an infinite intelligence that's the true source of all creativity and that Einstein or any scientist taps into when they come up with their truly original ideas. The first step would be to say, if it's just a computational bias, then it doesn't transcend. It doesn't get to this true originality. But then there's a deeper level... These are just avatars in a particular headset. So why can't we create a new avatar in our headset that looks like a computer that is actually an avatar of the deep intelligence? If we are only going to stick with the computational thing... But somehow the [human] avatar is a portal into the infinite consciousness... And we know one way of creating new portals into this infinite consciousness, and that is having kids. So that is one technology that allows us to do that. Once we understand spacetime as a headset, and we understand the headset and at least some layers of its relationship to the infinite reality, that's the source of true insight and true originality and creativity, could we figure out new ways to open up genuine new portals, and might that look like AI… The jury is out.”
  • Source: Donald Hoffman, in the YouTube video entitled “Donald Hoffman's New Approach To Consciousness” channel “Dr Brian Keating”. Online at <https://youtu.be/mU_WBela71Y?si=fNfLLsOsUDRDC1XD> posted 2024-08, retrieved 2024-08. In video at 1:14:40.

Grace_Hopper

Information Flood

“We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.”
  • Source: Grace Hopper as quoted in "The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper" by Philip Schieber in OCLC Newsletter, No. 167 (March/April 1987).

Hollis_A_Kinslow

System Problems

“There are two classes of system designers. The first, if given five problems will solve them one at a time. The second will come back and announce that these aren’t the real problems, and will eventually propose a solution to the single problem which underlies the original five. This is the ‘system type’ who is great during the initial stages of a design project. However, you had better get rid of him after the first six months if you want to get a working system.”

Fran_Lebowitz

Original Thought

“Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not possibly have met.”
  • Source: From the book "Social Studies", written by Fran Lebowitz, publication date 1981, published by Random House, ISBN 978-0394512457.

Peter_Medawar

Scientific Creativity

“To be creative, scientists need libraries and laboratories and the company of other scientists; certainly, a quiet and untroubled life is a help. A scientist's work is in no way deepened or made more cogent by privation, anxiety, distress, or emotional harassment. To be sure, the private lives of scientists may be strangely and even comically mixed up, but not in ways that have any special bearing on the nature and quality of their work. If a scientist were to cut off an ear, no one would interpret such an action as evidence of an unhappy torment of creativity; nor will a scientist be excused any bizarrerie, however extravagant, on the grounds that he is a scientist, however brilliant.”
  • Source: Sir Peter B. Medawar, In Advice to a Young Scientist (1979), 40

Alan_Perlis

Responsible Ideas

“Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.”

Arthur_Schopenhauer

Think New Thoughts

“So the problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees. Also for this reason, it takes so very much more to be a philosopher than a physicist.”

Solomon

Nothing New Under the Sun

“...there is no new thing under the sun”
  • Source: Solomon (or Kohelet). Ecclesiastes 1:9, King James Version of the Bible

Gerald_Weinberg

Technical Leaders

“Leadership, in the sense that social scientists use it, means the ability to influence people. Programmers, being people who tend to value creative work and professional competence, tend to put their stock in people whom they perceive to be good at the things they do. Thus, it is easier to exert leadership over — to influence — programmers by being a soft-spoken programming wizard than by being the world's fastest-talking salesman. When nonprogramming leaders are brought in to be in charge of programming teams, trouble usually brews unless the appointed leader explicitly and implicitly recognizes his incapacity on technical matters. The very worst he can do — and this goes also for a former programmer who has lost touch with the field — is to try to match programming wits with the other members of the team. Although a team might come to respect a leader who openly admitted his programming inexperience, they could only come to ridicule one whose pretense at knowledge was revealed to be a sham.”
  • Source: Chapter 5. Weinberg, G. M. (2011). The Psychology of Computer Programming (Silver anniversary edition) | 1971. Weinberg & Weinberg.