The quote library
Frankisms
Short truths, collected over a lifetime of writing and teaching. Read a few, or lose an afternoon.
- Collected
- 126
“A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind. — Robert Bolton”
creativity
“A creator is able to love something that does not yet exist—even in the imagination—and bring it into existence. From nothing, something is formed. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“A credible idea makes people believe. An emotional idea makes people care. — Chip Heath”
creativity
“A focus on self-esteem can actually hold people back from being effective at creating what they want. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“A library is thought in cold storage. — Herbert Samuel”
creativity
“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands. — Michelangelo”
creativity
“A mind preoccupied with particulars cannot discover the larger picture. — Gabriele Lusser Rico”
creativity
“All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door. — Albert Camus”
creativity
“All of us collect fortunes when we are children—a fortune of colors, of lights and darkness, of movements, of tensions. Some of us have the fantastic chance to go back to this fortune when grown up. — Ingmar Bergman, quoted in Time, December 29, 1980”
creativity
“All things are possible until they are proved impossible—and even the impossible may only be so, as of now. — Pearl S. Buck”
creativity
“All too often, unfortunately, the property rights to our minds can be purchased outright for money. — Jim Loehr”
creativity
“An important ability for all creators is being able to live with the unknown, the unresolved, the incongruent, and the contradictory. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. — Albert Einstein”
creativity
“As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without culture, so the mind without cultivation can never produce good fruit. — Seneca”
creativity
“As you become a better creator, you begin to develop an instinct for the actions that work and the actions that do not work. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“Be ready to find what you’re not looking for. — Marshall J. Cook”
creativity
“Brainstorm obstacles that will prevent the character from relief within the timeframe. Relieve the tension at the last possible moment. — James Scott Bell”
creativity
“Concentration does not mean squeezing your brain tight, but rather relaxing it and bypassing the editor. — Natalie Goldberg”
creativity
“Creating is often like a perpetual state of being in love. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“Creating is the place where the human spirit shines its brightest light. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“Creative thinking is just another name for finding new idea-combinations. — Rudolph Flesch”
creativity
“Creativity is the great yes. We all learn to say no too much and too soon. — Marshall J. Cook”
creativity
“Creators often do not have all the answers. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“Critics who complain the modern world has lost the art of conversation must never talk to children. — Rudolph Flesch”
creativity
“Distorting reality is detrimental to the creative process. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. — Ralph Charell”
creativity
“Don’t accept what has been done before as the only way to do anything. — Bill Veeck”
creativity
“Don’t copy the competition. — Thomas Umstattd”
creativity
“Don’t just hope for ideas. Hunt them down! — Dwight V. Swain”
creativity
“Every life will have some bit of wasteland, some empty lot where daydreams come to be. Learn to spend time there. — Linda McCullough Moore”
creativity
“Faith is building on what you know is here, so you can reach what you know is there. — Cullen Hightower”
creativity
“Good ideas come from having lots of ideas. — Marshall J. Cook”
creativity
“Have you ever been able to just stay with one thought for very long? Another one arises. — Natalie Goldberg”
creativity
“He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end. — Harry Emerson Fosdick”
creativity
“I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others. — Thomas Edison”
creativity
“I found if I go to bed with a question on my mind, all I have to do is concentrate on the question before I go to sleep and I virtually always have the answer in the morning. — Christopher Langan, tested with an IQ of 195”
creativity
“I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have. — Leonardo da Vinci”
creativity
“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow. — Woodrow Wilson”
creativity
“I shut my eyes in order to see. — Paul Gauguin”
creativity
“Ideas aren’t much use unless you write them down. — Marjorie Holmes”
creativity
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