1. “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.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) said this in an interview with Wired magazine in February 1996, the same conversation in which he laid out his plan for the company he had founded after leaving Apple. He had started Apple with Steve Wozniak in 1976 and would return to lead it in 1997. His point is deflationary in the best way: creative people do not conjure something from nothing. They notice a connection the rest of us missed, and because it seems obvious to them in hindsight they can feel like frauds for calling it creativity at all. What separates them, Jobs argued, is not a special faculty but a wider stock of experiences to draw on.

— Steve Jobs, interview in Wired (February 1996)

2. “Discovery consists precisely in not constructing useless combinations, but in constructing those that are useful, which are an infinitely small minority. Discovery is discernment, selection.”

Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, and by common consent one of the last people to know most of his field. He published Science and Method in 1908; the English translation by Francis Maitland appeared in 1914 with a preface by Bertrand Russell. Poincaré had spent years studying how mathematical insight actually happens, including his famous account of a solution arriving suddenly as he stepped onto an omnibus after a period of conscious work and rest. The mind, he concluded, generates combinations without end. Genius is not generating them but knowing which handful are worth keeping.

— Henri Poincaré, Science and Method (1908; trans. Francis Maitland, 1914)

3. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) gave this answer to the journalist George Sylvester Viereck in “What Life Means to Einstein,” published in The Saturday Evening Post on 26 October 1929. Asked whether he trusted his imagination more than his knowledge, Einstein replied that he was “enough of the artist” to draw freely upon it. He had received the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1921, awarded for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, and by the time of the interview his theory of general relativity had made him the most famous scientist alive. The line is often quoted as a slogan for daydreaming. In context it is an argument about where new knowledge comes from in the first place: imagination proposes, and knowledge tests.

— Albert Einstein, “What Life Means to Einstein,” The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929)

4. “Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.”

Twyla Tharp (born 1941) is an American dancer, choreographer and author who has created more than 130 dances for her own company and for companies including the Joffrey Ballet, New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. She won a Tony Award for the Broadway musical Movin’ Out (2003). This line comes from The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (2003), written with Mark Reiter, a book built on the idea that inspiration is a poor foundation for a working life. Tharp does not deny talent; she denies that talent is enough. The professional shows up, keeps the same rituals, and lets the work itself supply the ideas.

— Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit (2003)

5. “Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.”

John Cleese (born 1939) is a British actor, comedian and writer, and a founding member of Monty Python. He delivered this line in a lecture on creativity for the training-film company Video Arts in London on 23 January 1991. Cleese drew on the psychologist Donald MacKinnon, whose research found that the most creative scientists, architects, engineers and writers did not differ in IQ from their less creative peers. What set them apart was a facility for getting into a playful, open state of mind — something Cleese argued can be deliberately cultivated through space, time, confidence and humour, rather than waited for.

— John Cleese, “Creativity in Management” lecture (1991)

6. “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.”

Chuck Close (1940–2021) was an American painter and photographer known for monumental photorealist portraits built from thousands of tiny marks. He said this in a 2006 interview with the artist Joe Fig, published in Fig’s 2009 book Inside the Painter’s Studio. Close had been paralyzed from the neck down by a collapsed spinal artery in 1988 and went on to paint with a brush strapped to his hand and wrist. His advice to young artists was not to wait for a great idea before starting, because the idea tends to arrive only once the work is already underway. In 2017, several women publicly accused Close of sexual harassment; no charges were brought.

— Chuck Close, in Joe Fig, Inside the Painter’s Studio (2009)

7. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) was an American poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose 1969 memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings brought her international recognition. She spoke these words in a 1982 interview, later collected in Conversations with Maya Angelou, edited by Jeffrey M. Elliot (1989). She received the National Medal of Arts in 2000 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented in 2011. The line answers a fear that stops a great many people: that creativity is a finite tank, and that spending it now will leave nothing for later. Angelou treats it instead as a muscle, which is strengthened precisely by use.

— Maya Angelou, 1982 interview (collected in Conversations with Maya Angelou, 1989)

8. “Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934–2021) was a Hungarian-American psychologist who coined the concept of “flow,” the state of complete absorption in an activity that is challenging enough to demand everything we have. He taught at the University of Chicago for three decades and is regarded as a founder of positive psychology. The sentence comes from his 1996 book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, which was built on interviews with a wide range of exceptional creators. His claim is not only that creativity produces good work but that it gives ordinary life its sense of purpose — the reason a difficult project can feel more nourishing than an easy pleasure.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity (1996)

9. “We are all translators for messages the universe is broadcasting.”

Rick Rubin (born 1963) is an American record producer who co-founded Def Jam Recordings in 1984 and has worked across genres with artists from the Beastie Boys and Johnny Cash to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Adele. His book The Creative Act: A Way of Being (2023), written with Neil Strauss, was a #1 New York Times bestseller. Rubin’s image of the artist is deliberately unromantic and un-egotistical: the creator is not the source but an antenna, tuning in to something already being transmitted and translating it into a form other people can receive. The best artists, he writes, tend to be the ones with the most sensitive antennae.

— Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being (2023)

Create your own quote graphics

These quotes are meant to be shared. A well-designed quote graphic can stop a scroll, start a conversation, and steady someone at the right moment. Whether you are posting on Instagram, creating Pinterest pins, or designing WhatsApp statuses, Quotes Creator gives you ready-made templates, beautiful fonts, and custom gradients to bring any of these quotes to life in minutes.

Designing quote graphics for “Creativity”

• ✓ Lean into unexpected pairings — two unrelated textures, a diagram next to a photograph — to echo the idea of connecting things
• ✓ Use a bold display face for the quote and a quiet mono label for the attribution, keeping hierarchy crisp
• ✓ Choose a confident, mid-saturation palette rather than a single flat colour; creativity reads as combination, not uniformity
• ✓ Leave generous negative space so the line can breathe and register at a glance on mobile
• ✓ Export a square crop for Instagram and Pinterest, and a landscape version for X and blog headers