Bernard Berenson Quotes

Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.

I have created a life by stepping out of the box of people's limitations. I call it zigging when others are zagging.

Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are no schools for creativeness. A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made.

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

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

I'm not following anybody's tracks, I'm making my own baby.

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.

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.

The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

There is a lot of noise out there. I don't want to follow the trend - I want to create the trend.

Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

We've never tried to fit any mould because we already broke the one we started.

I don't like to follow in the footsteps. I like to learn from the footsteps that came before me, forge a new path.

I followed my own self and individuality so much that it automatically made me a game changer or set me apart from others. I did not think it was necessary to do things the way others are doing it.

Geniuses don't have better ideas than the rest of us. They just have more of them.

This was my motto: 'Don't come up with routine stuff.'

Innovation, creativity, and lunacy goes hand in hand.

Creativity means learning where the rules exist, and then breaking them! Saying, "It's better this way." But you have to know the rules in order to break them with any grace.

Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe - you can't take a taxi.

Genius ... is necessarily intolerant of fetters.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path ... It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts for distinction.

One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered.

Creativity is a by-product of hard work. If I never have another really new idea, it won't matter.

Creativity is not and never has been sensible.