Henry Louis Gates Jr. Quotes

Almost every significant breakthrough is the result of a courageous break with traditional ways of thinking.

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.

The best way to get people to think outside the box is not to create the box in the first place.

I like being on the margins. You work better there.

The situations that have been the biggest wins for me have been because I was forced to think differently.

As an artist, I have been a risk-taker. And I've done a lot of different things. I don't make it easy for people. Identification is difficult. One doesn't recognize my art right away.

When everyone zigs, zag. Life is all about trying to get somewhere first.

I like the fact that I like to think out-of-the-box. Thinking out-of-the-box goes along with dressing out-of-the-box and living out-of-the-box. If you want to come up with a really original design idea and you want to capture a whole new design direction, perhaps the best way to arrive at that is not by acting and thinking and doing like everybody else. That's all.

It's quite rare that you make something and think that you did something that no-one else had done.

Herman Melville said that artists have to take a dive and either you hit your head on a rock and you split your skull and you die … or that blow to the head is so inspiring that you come back and do the best work that you ever did. BUT you have to take the dive and you do not know what the results will be.

Think different in order to change the rules. By definition, if you don't change the rules you aren't a revolutionary, and if you don't think different, you won't change the rules.

Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge.

Taking risks, breaking the rules, and being a maverick have always been important but today they are more crucial than ever.

Every great idea is on the verge of being stupid.

The best reaction to a paradox is to invent a genuinely new and deep idea.

There ain't no rules here, we're trying to accomplish something...All this talk about rules...When the deal goes down...we make 'em up as we go along.

Your current thinking got you here. Only new thinking will get you out.

A creative person has to be alive. He can't borrow from things he's done in the past. He can't let his method choose his subjects or his characters. They can't be warped to fit his style.

Perhaps creativity is fumbling that dance step, or driving the chisel the wrong way into the stone.

We are the creatives with teeth. We know ideas are more important than our personal wellbeing.

An idea you have might not be original. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original.

Lateral thinking... is the process of using information to bring about creativity and insight restructuring. Lateral thinking can be learned, practised and used. It is possible to acquire skill in it just as it is possible to acquire skill in mathematics.

If I have smashed the traditions, it was because I knew no traditions.

Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time... Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.