“They enjoy thinking. They enjoy being creative. They enjoy having ideas. Most people do not enjoy thinking at all.”

The purpose of science is not to analyze or describe but to make useful models of the world. A model is useful if it allows us to get use out of it.

Intelligence is something we are born with. Thinking is a skill that must be learned.

We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.

America is not just a country, it’s an idea.

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

I’m tired of dreaming. I’m into doing at the moment. It’s, like, let’s only have goals that we can go after.

If you do not design the future, someone or something else will design it for you.

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.

Some people drift along like a cork on a river, feeling that they cannot do anything except drift, moment to moment. This is an attitude of mind. Everyone can be constructive even in tiny ways.

To be successful you have to be lucky, or a little mad, or very talented, or find yourself in a rapid growth field.

A characteristic of intuitive solutions and new ideas is that of being obvious once they are discovered.

Asking a question is the simplest way of focusing thinking asking the right question may be the most important part of thinking.

It is historical continuity that maintains most assumptions, not repeated assessment of their validity.

I do a great deal of work with young children, and if you give a child a problem, he may come up with a highly original solution, because he doesn’t have the established route to it.

It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.

Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain way. Looked at in another way, the right course of action may be so obvious that the problem no longer exists.

It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in.

In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell and only then does it review and inspect the multitudes.

At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind.

Artists die twice. First creatively. Then physically. The second one is the easiest.

If you are on to something creative, school can also inhibit you. The wrong teacher, man, can really mess you up.

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

You’ve only got 12 notes and however you mix them up is your thing.

Acting runs through my blood. There is some sort of creative desire to express myself and I would need that outlet. Otherwise I would be a nightmare to live with.