Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes

Creativity involves putting your imagination to work. In a sense, creativity is applied imagination.

I don't think my work is so strange. It's just a matter of having the discipline to go the whole way with an idea, to stretch it as far as it can go.

Creativity means learning where the rules exist, and then breaking them! Saying, "It's better this way." But you have to know the rules in order to break them with any grace.

Creativity is a form of knowledge.

Creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have. It is, for example, and this may surprise you, absolutely unrelated to IQ, provided you're intelligent above a certain minimal level.

Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.

Imagination is the beginning of creation.

Creativity is the greatest gift of human intelligence.

The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas.

Creativity is the ability to see and to respond.

Not to be boxed in, to be able to transcend boundaries: for an artist, it's essential.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture.

A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations.

I admire people who are creative.

Don't just rehash what came before. Find new things to do with it, in your unique voice.

I'm interested in creating new work.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

It's so important to me that I feel like I'm doing something that's never been done before, whether that's in the show, or I'm writing a song. I can exist in this little box here, but I have to do something new with it.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

I'm experimental by nature... always exploring my creativity.

Any teacher in the arts and sciences has to maintain a sense of childlikeness to be truly inventive.

Creativity runs across many categories in life, from the arts-and-crafts project a mum or dad does with their kids, to the bestselling author's manuscript, to the designs of the hairdresser, to the creations of the computer programming genius.

I have a strong belief in creativity in humans. It's our biggest strength.