Kenneth Clark Quotes

Anytime I think about my office, I think about creativity.

No matter what you do, if you're trying to create something new, your environment has a massive impact on you.

I have ideas whirring around my head all the time.

I'm the laziest inventor you ever met. My inventing is in my head - I don't have to be in the lab working and sweating.

You don't have to work for Google, or any of the other firms encouraging staff to pursue personal projects on company time, to use slowness to unlock your creativity. Anyone can do it. Start by clearing space in your schedule for rest, daydreaming and serendipity. Take breaks away from your desk, especially when you get stuck on a problem.

Being around some of the bright lights of the technology world and having them expect great things helps you sit down and do it seriously.

You can't just give someone a creativity injection. You have to create an environment for curiosity and a way to encourage people and get the best out of them.

For most people, creativity is a serious business. They forget the telling phrase 'the play of ideas' and think that they need to knuckle down and work more. Often, the reverse is true. They need to play.

Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands.

Recent studies have shown that our creativity is increased by 60% when we're walking. I encourage my workshop participants to write at their desks but think on their feet.

I would worry if I wasn't coming up with ideas, if I wasn't inspired.

I always got ideas.

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

I can't remember ever being really bored. I find life very interesting, actually. I think some other musicians are always looking for something to give them an idea, but I find I have to reject 90 percent of my ideas because they don't live up to some self-imposed standard. That's also why I don't make a record once a year. I throw so many things out, and I have to have something to say.

I can't really say - if I've run out of ideas until I've had my next set of ideas.

Boredom is useful to me when I notice it and think: Oh I'm bored; there must be something else I want to be doing... boredom acts as an initiator of originality by pushing me into new activities or new thoughts.

Every idea occurs while you are working. If you are sitting around waiting for inspiration, you could sit there forever.

Everything great that ever happened in this world happened first in somebody’s imagination.

I think imagination is at the heart of everything we do. Scientific discoveries couldn't have happened without imagination. Art, music, and literature couldn't exist without imagination. And so anything that strengthens imagination, and reading certainly does that, can help us for the rest of our lives.

Creativity allows people to be effective.

I think that 60 percent of inspiration is organization.

Find a space where you can be creative and a place where you are open for free thinking, you want to enjoy what you are doing and do what you are best at.

We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything. Several new science papers suggest that getting away is an essential habit of effective thinking. When we escape from the place we spend most of our time, the mind is suddenly made aware of all those errant ideas we'd previously suppressed. We start thinking about obscure possibilitiebsthat never would have occurred to us if we'd stayed home.

You can inspire people to give you greatness, or you can micro-manage them into your own one specific kernel of an idea. To me, I think that when you inspire people to give their best, then you're going to get the best result.

If you want people to perform better, you reward them, right? Bonuses, commissions, their own reality show. Incentivize them. [...] But that's not happening here. You've got an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity, and it does just the opposite. It dulls thinking and blocks creativity.