Jacob Bronowski Quotes

Great art allows you to transcend your mortal frame and to reach for the stars. I think great science does the same thing.

Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.

People think of art and science as being fundamentally opposed to each other, because art is about celebrating individual human creativity, and science is about discovering general principles, not about individual people. But in fact, the two have a lot in common, and the creative spirit is similar in both.

The discoveries of science, the works of art are explorations - more, are explosions, of a hidden likeness. The discoverer or artist presents in them two aspects of nature and fuses them into one. This is the act of creation, in which an original thought is born, and it is the same act in original science and original art.

What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.

You've really got to get down on the floor with yourself and get low in order to make great art. I think you've just got to accept who you are and do the most unbelievable things.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

I take references from the past and flip them.

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.

You should make something. You should bring something into the world that wasn't in the world before. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter if it's a table or a film or gardening-everyone should create. You should do something, then sit back and say, 'I did that.'

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination.

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

I like to create.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

I mean, the most important thing to me is imagination.

Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art. They are all the same absolutely.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.