John W. Gardner Quotes

Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices.

We're starting to push the envelope in terms of the expectations, and you can also have your own style, personality and sense of humor, because now we're allowed to.

We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.

I want to entertain, but I also want to push the barriers beyond what kids are conditioned into accepting.

Innovation, creativity, and lunacy goes hand in hand.

If you want the best things to happen in corporate life you have to find ways to be hospitable to the unusual person. You don't get innovation as a democratic process. You almost get it as an anti-democratic process. Certainly you get it as an antithetical process, so you have to have an environment where the body of people are really amenable to change and can deal with the conflicts that arise out of change an innovation.

I get a kick out of being an outsider constantly. It allows me to be creative.

When you're really having fun, you're always doing it a little bit in a way that you're not supposed to. That's when great things happen.

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

Weezer isn't stuck in roles, so we just do what we want to do, what makes us excited.

They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

My respect for artists is very high. I think to get the most out of them, you have to liberate them. I think part of liberating them is saying, 'Come up with something brilliant, new, and fresh. Stop thinking based on what has been beat into you by executives or publishers in terms of what's going to work and what's not. Don't react, just act.'

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

I've always been controversial because I offer new ideas. For me to be controversial, I think this is positive.

Art is maybe a subversive activity. There is a certain rebellion when you are an artist at heart, even if only in the art of living.

Australians have a free spirit and an ability to think outside the box, and that is why I like Australia so much.

Free yourself from the rigid conduct of tradition and open yourself to the new forms of probability.

I don't read my books, so I don't allow myself the dangerous luxury of toying with the idea of doing things differently.

Sometimes my mistakes turn into interesting music because I do things that aren't supposed to be done.

Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom.

These are ideas. I could say that they just came to me, but it would be more accurate to say that I went to them. Ideas - and new connections between ideas - lead you away from commonly held perceptions of reality. Ideas lead you out here. Ideas lead you into the darkness.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.

Since I was in my early twenties, at ABC, I was always only interested in things that were not already being done.

Creative freedom is a huge carrot.

Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics.