Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

I don't think anyone really says anything new.

The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original thinking, by endeavors to form new combinations, and to discover new truths, than by passively receiving the impressions of other men's ideas.

Men of strong minds and who think for themselves, should not be discouraged on finding occasionally that some of their best ideas have been anticipated by former writers; they will neither anathematize others nor despair themselves. They will rather go on discovering things before discovered, until they are rewarded with a land hitherto unknown, an empire indisputably their own, both right of conquest and of discovery.

All of our existing ideas have creative possibilities.

A man who has not enough originality to think out a new title for his book will be much less capable of giving it new contents.

Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.

Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.

It is almost impossible to think of something no one has thought of before, but it is always possible to add different frills.

Being creative means first of all doing something unusual... On the other hand, however unusual it may be, the idea also has to be reasonable for people to take it seriously.

British press think entirely in clichés, and when they do come across creative work, they think that it must be based on something, because they don't realize that you can create things that aren't based on things.

Be as unique and original as possible.

Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.

Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.

It requires philosophy and heroism to rise above the opinion of the wise men of all nations and races.

Only fools think they're wise; the rest of us just muddle through as we can.

If anything, it's a little intimidating because there's usually a lot of brilliant work and a lot of brilliant ideas out there that you wish you had thought of, or that you just admire for the originality of it or the difference from what you've been thinking of.

A wise man first thinks and then speaks and a fool speaks first and then thinks.

originality" is everyone's aim, and novel techniques are as much prized as new scientific discoveries. [T.S.] Eliot states it with surprising naïveté: "It is exactly as wasteful for a poet to do what has been done already as for a biologist to rediscover Mendel's discoveries.

It is foolish to try to imitate the skills of others.

There are so many rules in the art world. I don't like rules and I break them all the time. I don't care if people think I'm overexposed. What I care about is if I'm going to run out of energy. Overexposure is only a problem if you are drained of energy and cannot come up with new ideas. Every artist has to recognize that and know when to stop for a moment.

Creativity exists in the present moment. You can't find it anywhere else.

The fool who thinks he is wise is just a fool. The fool who knows he is a fool is wise indeed.

Life with Fools consists in Drinking; with the wise Man, living's Thinking.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.

I looked at the world of books and just went, Oh my gosh, if I'm writing novels, I'm on the same shelves as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Petronius - whereas with comics, they've only been doing them for a hundred years, and there's stuff that nobody's done before. I think I'll go off and do some of the stuff no one's ever done before.