Thomas Sowell Quotes

No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.

The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.

It's no longer possible to find something which will shock other people, because everything has already been done.

No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius--a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.

Common sense means living in the world as it is today; but creative people are people who don't want the world as it is today but want to make another world.

Imposing an alleged uniform general method upon everybody breeds mediocrity in all but the very exceptional. And measuring originality by deviation from the mass breeds eccentricity in them.

Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.

Normal means lack of imagination and creativity.

Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.

Good storytelling for me is not so much technical expertise, which I know is applauded often; it's actually freshness of approach. It does mean you sometimes stumble and fall and make a horrible mess of things in seeking that freshness, but you should always keep trying to do that.

What is perfection, anyway? It's the death of creativity.

I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.

Some people have great ideas maybe once or twice in their life, and then they discover electricity or fire or outer space or something. I mean, the kind of brilliant ideas that change the whole world. Some people never have them at all... I get them two or three times a week.

I thought weirdness was a good thing. I don't mean that defensively, either. I thought it was something to be cultivated.

- But Abraham, you mean I'm supposed to make stuff up !?!? - You are creators, you make stuff up all the time!

Own what you are, and I mean whether that's art, or whether that's fashion, or whether that's music, or whether that's acting, or whether that's politics, or whether that's literature; it's own what you are, and grab it, and, you know, be as prolific as possible.

Imitators are but a servile kind of cattle.

The human spirit lives on creativity and dies in conformity and routine.

You can find truly original pieces of writing, but they're original because you go, "Who would have even have thought of that?," or, "Why would anyone ever want to go see that?"

I think the enemy of creativity in the world today is that so much thinking is done for you.

One of the enemies of creativity and innovation, especially in relation to our own development, is common sense.

Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates.

No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.

My thing is: stay creative. And just because somebody starts to pay you, that don't mean all your creativity goes to that, and you don't save none for yourself to be able to do other, bigger and better things and still follow your dreams even if you start off inside of a box.

Strain your brain more than your eye... You can copy a thing to a certain limit. Then you must use intellect.