100+ Artists Quotes: Inspirational Sayings from the World's Greatest Creatives

“Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein

“The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.” – Neil Gaiman

“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life.” – Julia Cameron

“An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.” – Tom Stoppard

“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.” – George Bernard Shaw

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” – Thomas Merton

“The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.” – Isadora Duncan

“Doodle upon doodle until something appears.” – Salvador Dalí

“Every artist was first an amateur.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein

“The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.” – Pablo Picasso

“I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.” – Vincent van Gogh

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath

“Tragedy is better than comedy for making art.” – Frida Kahlo

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

“The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.” – Jackson Pollock

“Art is born of the pain that has no name.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat

“I put my heart and soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” – Vincent van Gogh

“Without great suffering there can be no art.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I suffer from the need to create.” – Edvard Munch

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” – Émile Zola

“I paint because I need to, and I paint because I can’t stop.” – Willem de Kooning

“Creation comes from conflict, not comfort.” – Ai Weiwei

“To copy others is necessary, to copy oneself is pathetic.” – Pablo Picasso

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical. If you follow through, it will take care of itself.” – Martha Graham

“Originality is simply a fresh pair of eyes.” – Eden Phillpotts

“When I find myself copying others, I know I’m on the wrong path.” – Banksy

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” – Pablo Picasso

“If you can’t outplay them, outlast them.” – Philip Glass

“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be.” – Brené Brown

“I never wanted to be a museum piece.” – Yoko Ono

“What’s the point of being realistic? Reality is already here.” – Yayoi Kusama

“I invent my life every day.” – Marina Abramović

“Never imitate. It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” – Herman Melville

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison

“Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.” – Napoleon Hill

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” – Henry Ford

“It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates

“I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.” – Jack Welch

“Fail early and fast, and learn from it.” – Simon Wardley

“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” – Amelia Earhart

“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” – Truman Capote

“I’d rather regret the risks that didn’t work out than the chances I didn’t take at all.” – Simone Biles

“There is no such thing as failing—only feedback.” – Robert Kiyosaki

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” – Twyla Tharp

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” – Cesar A. Cruz

“I dream my painting and then I paint my dream.” – Vincent van Gogh

“Art is the explosion of the soul.” – José Clemente Orozco

“I am my own muse, the subject I know best.” – Frida Kahlo

“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.” – Plutarch

“I don’t paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.” – Frida Kahli

“Art is the stored honey of the human soul.” – Theodore Dreiser

“Emotion is the root of art.” – Wassily Kandinsky

“Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.” – René Magritte

“A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.” – Eugene Ionesco

“I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say ‘he feels deeply, he thinks profoundly.’” – Vincent van Gogh

“Solitude is the soil in which genius is planted.” – A.H. Almaas

“I shut myself in so I can come out.” – Louise Bourgeois

“The artist needs solitude to hear the whispers of inspiration.” – Ansel Adams

“I live alone, I like silence. A great deal of silence.” – Ingmar Bergman

“In order to be open to creativity, one must have chaos.” – Rita Mae Brown

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.” – Albert Einstein

“Solitude is where I place my chaos to rest and awaken my inner peace.” – Nikki Rowe

“The best thinking has been done in solitude.” – Thomas Edison

“Loneliness is the price for greatness.” – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“I create from the isolation of my own experience.” – Tracey Emin

“To be an artist is to believe in life.” – Henry Moore

“My studio is my sanctuary.” – Cindy Sherman

“Beauty is the promise of happiness.” – Stendhal

“Art disturbs, science reassures.” – Georges Braque

“All art is but imitation of nature.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Art is the most beautiful of all lies.” – Claude Debussy

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“Everything you can imagine is real.” – Pablo Picasso

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” – Aristotle

“Art is the objectivation of feeling.” – Leo Tolstoy

“To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts—such is the duty of the artist.” – Robert Schumann

“Art is the proper task of life.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Color is my day-long obsession, joy, and torment.” – Claude Monet

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” – Edgar Degas

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.” – Pablo Picasso

“I don’t wait for inspiration. I go after it with a club.” – Jack London

“The muse knocks in strange places.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London

“Wherever the bird of music alights, it is his own music which he hears.” – Rabindranath Tagore

“Inspiration is a guest that visits only when it finds you working.” – T.S. Eliot

“I wake up every morning and climb Mount Everest to write.” – Haruki Murakami

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs

“Muses are everywhere—if you’re willing to listen.” – Lin-Manuel Miranda

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet.” – William Blake

“I don’t chase inspiration. I domesticate it.” – Austin Kleon

“The universe burps, and suddenly I have an idea.” – David Lynch

“Art is a weapon.” – Diego Rivera

“Art challenges society, and society reshapes art.” – Banksy

“Art is the conscience of a nation.” – Leon Trotsky

“All art is political, even the absence of politics.” – Toni Morrison

“The role of the artist is to make revolution irresistible.” – Judy Chicago

“Art should be dangerous. It should be dangerous to those in power.” – Eric Bogosian

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” – Bertolt Brecht

“The artist’s job is to upset, disturb, and provoke.” – Francis Bacon

“Culture is the widening of the mind and spirit.” – Jawaharlal Nehru

“Art is the highest form of hope.” – Gerhard Richter

“Art makes life, makes interest, makes importance.” – Henry James

“Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers—and never succeeding.” – Marc Chagall

“I don’t want to be immortal through my work. I want to be immortal by not dying.” – Woody Allen

“After death, you're immortal. But only if your work lives on.” – Andy Warhol

“Art is the only immortality, and it’s final.” – Leonid S. Sukhorukov

“I leave traces of myself behind in my paintings.” – Frida Kahlo

“A great artist is always ahead of his time.” – George Moore

“My paintings are my children. They will outlive me.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

“Legacy is not what is left behind, but what is lived beyond the self.” – Elie Wiesel

“I want to be remembered for my art, not my fame.” – Prince

“Art endures when empires fall.” – Unknown

“The goal isn’t to live forever, it’s to create something that does.” – Chuck Palahniuk

“I paint to leave a mark on the world.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat

“Death is not the end for an artist. His work continues to speak.” – Akira Kurosawa