Steven Johnson Quotes

Innovation actually demands freedom and freedom demands innovation.

I've always done very 'composed' music and worked-out solos. But sometimes it's fun not knowing where you're going.

To create an organization that's adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to 'waste' time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions.

I think it's important to give young people the freedom to follow their ideas and pursue their interests.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

We have no precedents to guide us, and that is a glorious thing, for precedents, like other guides are disposed to grow tyrannical and refuse to let us do anything on our own initiative. Life grows wearisome in the countries where precedents and conventionality is rule and nothing can happen unless it has happen before.

... encourage the free play of our people's genius for individual initiative.

I think we shouldn't buckle up our creativity. You've got to experiment!

If you look at somebody like Sam Bee, she got to create her own thing without any expectations that there was a show there. That was probably liberating for them.

I wanted to be free to try any silly thing I decided to do.

[At DuPont,] I was very fortunate that I worked under men who were very much interested in making discoveries and inventions. They were very much interested in what they were doing, and they left me alone. And I was able to experiment on my own, and I found this very stimulating. It appealed to the creative person in me.

I just wanted to make something in the world and worry about the rest of it later and not get too caught up in rules.

You get the idea. Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once. There are no rules. You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over, and it's because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over. It's the greatest thrill in the world and it runs away screaming at the first sight of bullet points.

Your parents ask you to follow the standard path: School, job, security. Is this really the best way? I don't think so - be your own boss!

Weezer isn't stuck in roles, so we just do what we want to do, what makes us excited.

The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you.

I'd rather play here in this small bar and just do a good show. Because it's fun and there's no expectations, it's encouragement to be different, do something new.

I think when you've had success, publishers and reviewers and readers are willing to let you try something new if you've already proven yourself. They're excited about what you're doing, you have people interested in it, and actually waiting for it. It's empowering.

I love to play things that are out-of-the-box. It's just that I don't always get the chance to do it!

I am somebody who... - I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I need that freedom, that ability to make mistakes out there. Because there's a fine line between making a mistake or being brilliant.

Freelancers are 'free' because they take risks - they don't like being told what to do. That's both exciting and daunting, because you have to police you.

Everyone should be commended for allowing people to make disasters, to make failures - you've just got to be sure that it's a magnificent failure and that, by creating a magnificent failure, you plant the seed.

Don't stay at the job for safe salary increases over time. That will never get you where you want - freedom from financial worry. Only free time, imagination, creativity, and an ability to disappear will help you deliver value that nobody ever delivered before in the history of mankind.

And I found that when I built my own place and just shut the door, the creativity was endless.