The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Albert Einstein3 quotes
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. — Albert Einstein · 1930A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. But intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. — Albert Einstein · 1949Imagination is more important than knowledge. — Albert Einstein · 1929Agatha Christie1 quote
Invention... Arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. — Agatha Christie · 1976Alain de Botton1 quote
Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows. — Alain de Botton · 2010Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi1 quote
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. — Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi · 1962Alexander Fleming1 quote
It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual. — Alexander Fleming · 1951Alfred Whitney Griswold1 quote
Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. — Alfred Whitney Griswold · 1957Austin Kleon1 quote
Steal old stuff. — Austin Kleon · 2017David Hockney1 quote
Limitations are really good for you. They are a stimulant. If you were told to make a drawing of a tulip using five lines, or using a hundred, you'd have to be more inventive with the five. — David HockneyEdmund Wilson1 quote
I have had a good many more uplifting thoughts, creative and expansive visions-while soaking in comfortable baths or drying myself after bracing showers-in well-equipped American bathrooms than I have ever had in any cathedral. — Edmund Wilson · 1956Friedrich Nietzsche1 quote
One must have chaos inside oneself to give birth to a dancing star. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1883George Bernard Shaw1 quote
You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?" — George Bernard Shaw · 1921Henri Matisse1 quote
Creativity takes courage. — Henri MatisseHenry Ford1 quote
Wise people... Are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. — Henry Ford · 1922Henry James1 quote
We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. — Henry James · 1893Hermann Hesse1 quote
But there is good and reason in us, in human beings, with whom fortune plays, and we can be stronger than nature and fate, if only for a few hours. And we can draw close to one another in times of need, understand and love one another, and live to comfort each other. And sometimes, when the black depths are silent, we can do even more. We can then be gods for moments, stretch out a commanding hand and create things which were not there before and which, when they are created, continue to live without us. — Hermann Hesse · 1910Jackson Pollock1 quote
The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. — Jackson Pollock · 1948Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1 quote
I by no means owe my works to my own wisdom alone, but to a thousand things and persons around me, who provided me with material. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1832John Steinbeck1 quote
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. — John Steinbeck · 1947Joyce Kilmer1 quote
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree. — Joyce Kilmer · 1913Lawrence Durrell1 quote
Our inventions mirror our secret wishes. — Lawrence Durrell · 1958Marcel Proust1 quote
Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realise how much it owes to them and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it. — Marcel Proust · 1921Mark Twain1 quote
Imagination labors best in distant fields. — Mark Twain · 1869Mary Shelley1 quote
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos. — Mary Shelley · 1831Michel de Montaigne1 quote
Bees ransack flowers here and there, but then they make honey, which is entirely theirs: it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Similarly a boy will transform and mix his borrowings. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Mikhail Bakunin1 quote
The urge for destruction is also a creative urge! — Mikhail Bakunin · 1842Oscar Wilde1 quote
The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything. — Oscar Wilde · 1885Pablo Picasso1 quote
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. — Pablo Picasso · 1935R.D. Laing1 quote
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. — R.D. Laing · 1967Richard Franck1 quote
Necessity is the mother of invention. — Richard Franck · 1694Socrates1 quote
The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention. — Socrates · 375 BC