100+ Inspirational Quotes For Creative People & Entrepreneurs

Pat Walls

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Updated: January 19th, 2023

100+ Inspirational Quotes For Creative People & Entrepreneurs

Looking for an inspirational quote to get your creative juices flowing?

We put together 100+ quotes for creative people and entrepreneurs.

Here they are:

Inspirational Quotes

"Creativity takes courage." - Henri Matisse
“I don’t think there’s any artist of any value who doesn’t doubt what they’re doing.” – Francis Ford Coppola
“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” – Ayn Rand
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” – Steve Jobs
“I think an artist’s responsibility is more complex than people realize.” – Jodie Foster
"Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later. – Og Mandino"
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. – Albert Einstein"
"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. – Edwin Land"
"Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it. – Dee Hock"
"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. – Oscar Wilde"
"Even a true artist does not always produce art. – Carroll O’Connor"
"Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties. – Gail Sheehy"
"An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one. – Charles Horton Cooley"
"The weeds keep multiplying in our garden, which is our mind ruled by fear. Rip them out and call them by name. – Sylvia Browne"
"An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. – James Whistler"
"Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can? – Sun Tzu"
"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities. – Dr. Seuss"
"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. – Carl Sagan"
"The imagination is man’s power over nature. – Wallace Stevens"
"Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy. – Norman Vincent Peale"
"Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. – Thomas Jefferson"
"If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much. – Jim Rohn"
"If you’ve got a talent, protect it. – Jim Carrey"
"Live out of your imagination, not your history. – Stephen Covey"
"It’s always too early to quit. – Norman Vincent Peale"

Professional Quotes

"Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned. – Peter Marshall"
"To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it." - Osho
"Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don't bother concealing your thievery -- celebrate it if you feel like it." - Jim Jarmusch
"It's not where you take things from -- it's where you take them to." - Jean-Luc Godard
"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist." - Pablo Picasso
"Creative works may indeed by kind of like property, but it's property that we're all building on." - Kirby Ferguson
"The inner fire is the most important thing mankind possesses." - Edith Södergran
"Creativity is one of the last remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition." - Ed McCabe
"The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable." - Robert Henri
"The thing is to become a master and, in your old age, to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing." - Ernest Hemingway
"There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun." - Pablo Picasso
"Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better." - John Updike
"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." - William Faulkner
"This is how you do it: You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it's done. It's that easy, and that hard." - Neil Gaiman
"Never put off writing until you are better at it." - Gary Henderson
"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." - Albert Einstein
"Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a f**king sharp knife to it." - Banksy
"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." - Oscar Wilde
"I believe humans get a lot done, not because we're smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make coffee." - Flash Rosenberg
"The chief enemy of creativity is good sense." - Pablo Picasso
"Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl." - Nellie McClung
"Creativity is intelligence having fun." - Albert Einstein
"Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is doing something else." - Tom Peters
"Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit." - e.e. cummings
"The first draft of anything is sh*t." - Ernest Hemingway

Life Quotes

"Go where the silence is and say something." - Amy Goodman
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." - Maya Angelou
"The scariest moment is always just before you start." - Stephen King
"That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you." - Ray Bradbury
"Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change." - Brené Brown
"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones." - John Maynard Keynes
"Almost always, the dedicated creative minority has made the world better." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"'Keeping busy' is the remedy for all ills. It's also the means by which creative impulse is destroyed." - Joyce Carol Oates
"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - Sylvia Plath
"You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore." - Andre Gide
"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." - Andy Warhol
"Creativity is a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." - Arthur Koestler
"Our best successes come after our greatest disappointments." - Henry Ward Beecher
"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one." - Elbert Hubbard
"Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes; work never begun." - Christina Rossetti
"There are no rules here. We're trying to accomplish something." - Thomas Edison
"Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it." - Dee Hock
"If you hear a voice within you say, 'You cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." - Vincent van Gogh
"Have no fear of perfection; you'll never reach it." Salvador Dali
"From 30,000 feet, creating looks like art. From ground level, it's a to-do list." - Ben Arment
"One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar." --Helen Keller, co-founder of the ACLU
"Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion." --Jack Welch, former CEO of GE
"If you had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." --Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company
"Creativity is the root of entrepreneurship." --Karndee Leopairote, Thammasat University
"You always have a choice. You have a choice to embrace the unknown and grow in leaps and bounds, or you can choose to be stuck for years and years and years." --Ariana Ayu, CEO of Ayutopia International, author of The Magic of Mojo: The Creative Power Behind Success

Positive Quotes

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new." --Dan Millman, author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior
"There's lots of bad reasons to start a company. But there's only one good, legitimate reason, and I think you know what it is: it's to change the world." --Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote
"Fail often so you can succeed sooner." --Tom Kelley, innovation expert
"Being imaginative is having ideas; being creative is converting ideas into production." --Amornrat Pratoomma, P-PAC
"The things we fear the most in organizations--fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances--are the primary sources of creativity." --Margaret Wheatley, management consultant
"Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard." --Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop
"Have the end in mind and every day make sure you're working towards it." --Ryan Allis, co-founder and CEO of iContact
"Define success in your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you're proud to live." --Anne Sweeney, former president of the Disney-ABC Television Group
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." --Maya Angelou, author and poet
"Be so good they can't ignore you." --Steve Martin, comedian and actor
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison, inventor
"Creativity is not just a skill but an attitude--a rebellious desire to be different." --Chaipranin Visudhipol, TBWA
"There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way." --Christopher Morley, journalist
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." --George S. Patton, U.S. general
"'Someday' is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it's important to you and you want to do it 'eventually,' just do it and correct course along the way." --Timothy Ferriss, author
"Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical." --Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks
"Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune." --Jim Rohn, entrepreneur
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." --Albert Einstein, physicist
"In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination." --Steve Case, co-founder of AOL
"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark." --Michelangelo, artist
"Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you." --Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
"Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted." --George Kneller, author
"Simplicity is the key to brilliance." --Bruce Lee, martial arts expert
"You are what you think. So just think big, believe big, act big, work big, give big, forgive big, laugh big, love big, and live big." --Andrew Carnegie, industrialist and philanthropist
"It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas." --Edwin Land, Polaroid co-founder

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