Herbie Hancock Quotes

I just want to be as creative as I possibly can.

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.'

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

In life, a lot of great ideas sound insane or absurd at first.

No film should try to follow a trend, and do what film people think the public wants. There's no such thing as knowing what the public wants.

One way we can enliven the imagination is to push it toward the illogical. We're not scientists. We don't always have to make the logical, reasonable leap.

There's no room for being a visionary in the studio system. It literally cannot exist.

I'm creative; I'm not re-creative.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn't been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that's really worthwhile.

What guides me is to do work that's more avant-garde - things that I think are special. You can easily become a celebrity and get caught up in all that blur. I just want to work and surprise myself.

The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history.

The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.

I want to see creativity that breaks boundaries and isn't just about money.

Imagination should always be treasured, even when it's slightly off-key.

Creativity has got to have some edge to it, doesn't it?

Creativity has no boundaries.

The key to artistry is being able to say stuff the way other people can't.

The fact is that creativity is everywhere. It's just about the way that you look at things.

Creativity requires novelty. Imagination is all about counterfactuals and untested possibilities that don't yet exist.

Creative instinct is personal.

Innovation, creativity, and lunacy goes hand in hand.

It’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there, it’s very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers and the creators. They are the magic people of the world.

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

To make something really great and different and interesting means taking risks and following these ideas in your head.

I don't need to feel 100% safe, but I have to feel like there's room for me to go a little bit insane if I'm going to have good ideas. Because a good idea is a new idea and if you start going around like, "I have this new idea!" most people are gonna be like, "I've never heard that before, that sounds fishy."