What is creativity? Here are 20 definitions for creativity from creative minds.
Mankind is inherently creative, but how we define it has changed over the years. Creativity has gone from being a gift of the gods to a genetic trait and now a skill. The term has gone through many changes.
“Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one… What counts is whether the novelty produced is accepted for inclusion in the domain.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
American-Hungarian psychologist
“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”
― Albert Einstein
Theoretical physicist
“Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Roman philosopher
“Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.”
― Gail Sheehy
American author
“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”
― Carl Jung
Swiss psychiatrist
“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.”
― Mary Lou Cook
Actress
“Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.”
― Arthur Koestler
Author
“Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas.”
― Donatella Versace
Italian fashion designer
“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
American business magnate
“The things we fear most in organizations – fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances – are the primary sources of creativity.”
― Margaret J. Wheatley
American writer
“Starting with nothing and ending up with something. Interpreting something you saw or experienced and processing it so it comes out different than how it went in.”
― Henry Rollins
American musician, actor, activist
“The strange partnership between a human being’s labor and the mystery of inspiration.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert
American journalist and author
“A process of becoming sensitive to problems, deficiencies, gaps in knowledge, missing elements, disharmonies, and so on; identifying the difficulty; searching for solutions, making guesses, or formulating hypotheses about the deficiencies: testing and retesting these hypotheses and possibly modifying and retesting them; and finally communicating the results.”
― Dr. E. Paul Torrance
American psychologist
“The ability to connect the seemingly unconnected and meld existing knowledge into new insight about some element of how the world works. That’s practical creativity. Then there’s moral creativity: to apply that skill towards some kind of wisdom on how the world ought to work.”
― Maria Popova
Bulgarian writer
“Giving the world something it didn’t know it was missing.”
― Daniel Pink
American author
“Tapping into your soul and your intuition and allowing them to guide what you make.”
― Bernadette Jiwa
Author
“Art lives where absolute freedom is, because where it is not, there can be no creativity”
― Bruce Lee
Martial artist, writer, philosopher, actor, director
“One part inspiration, one part motivation.”
― Ann Handley
Author and marketer
“Seeing something that doesn’t exist and then making it so.”
― Hugh Howey
American writer
“Creativity is expressing your ideas in a full-contact, full-color way. It is using as many senses as possible to express an idea. It is the zone from which great, useful things are created.”
― Pam Slim
Author and speaker
How do you define creativity? Follow creativity further with these inspirational quotes to ignite curiosity.
Zach is an international writer, photographer, filmmaker, martial artist, and creator of Creative Enso, the Zen art of creative living. His goal is to empower and inspire creatives to live healthier, happier, and more creative lifestyles.
