Valerie Jarrett Quotes

We must dare to think “unthinkable” thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about ‘unthinkable’ things because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.

By the way, intelligence to me isn't just being book-smart or having a college degree; it's trusting your gut instincts, being intuitive, thinking outside the box, and sometimes just realizing that things need to change and being smart enough to change it.

Somebody is going to find a way digitally that is just as innovative. In the end, the tools can change, but there is always someone who can think of something cool to do.

Problems are challenges to creative minds. Without problems, there would be little reason to think at all.

I think being a producer makes you a problem solver, so you kind of go, "Well there's a problem. What do we do? How do we solve it?"

Solving problems should be a joy, a welcome challenge to our creativity.

My mind contains many good ideas, but it's not always easy to squeeze one out.

Ideas are of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just an idea. Almost anyone can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product.

I think the most important thing is discovering an idea that moves you, and then letting people who are moved by that idea find each other, and work together. A lot of times people focus on the technical side-"oh, I've got to take a class on non-profit development." Too few people allow themselves to think outside the box with regard to their issue areas.

We need radical thinking, creative ideas, and imagination.

As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems.

It's endlessly interesting to be organizing and hearing possible solutions or thinking of possible solutions and how to put efforts together. It makes everything else boring, actually.

Whenever we pride ourselves upon finding a newer, stricter way of thought or exposition … we lose something of the ability to think new thoughts. And equally, of course, whenever we rebel against the sterile rigidity of formal thought and exposition and let our ideas run wild, we likewise lose. As I see it, the advances in scientific thought come from a combination of lose and strict thinking, and this combination is the most precious tool of science.

The capacity to innovate - the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life - and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge.

For without invention, no one was ever a great man in his own trade.

The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways.

I am all the time thinking about poetry and fiction and you.

When the mind is un-agitated, when the mind is calm, that mind is most conducive to creative problem solving.

Everything comes to me while I'm sitting on the pot.

Creativity, as I see it, is the process of putting your imagination to work. It's been defined rather simply as applied imagination. That's not a bad way to think about it.

I used to read more when I was a kid than I do now. It was all sort of fuel for the fire to teach you how to think and how to make things and it informed the architecture that I was doing. It's better coming in with that history and that kind of knowledge and depth of understanding of humanity that is very important for building buildings - for understanding people and how they should live and how you could make your lives better and stuff like that.

The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.

As one of my creative writing professors once said, there are only seven plots. What makes those plots different is how you handle them, your voice, your style, and your way of thinking. That’s all. People can mimic your style, but they can never achieve your unique point of view.

Some people live where they work. Others just visit.​

You don't want to be the smartest person in the room; you want to be the dumbest in the room. You want to be surrounded by other thinking people who are going to say something that makes you think, "Oh, my God, that's an amazing idea. Why didn't I think of that."