100+ Famous Artists Quotes That Inspire Creativity & Motivation

“Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse

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

“The artist sees what others only look at.” – George Bernard Shaw

“To be an artist is to believe that life is worth living.” – Leonard Bernstein

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

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso

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

“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” – Ansel Adams

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

“The creative adult is the child who survived.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul.” – Martha Graham

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

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

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” – Robert Hughes

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty… I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” – Buckminster Fuller

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

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

“Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.” – Sun Tzu

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent van Gogh

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.” – Michael Jordan

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” – Albert Einstein

“Obstacles don’t block the path; they are the path.” – Zen Proverb

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” – Helen Keller

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.” – Steve Jobs

“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” – Oscar Wilde

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

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” – Pablo Picasso

“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.” – James McNeill Whistler

“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” – Sam Levenson

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” – Terry Pratchett

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” – Voltaire

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” – Stephen King

“Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.” – Frank Herbert

“Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” – George Addair

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will.” – Suzy Kassem

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear.” – Rosa Parks

“Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.” – Winston Churchill

“Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability.” – Sally Field

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.” – Brené Brown

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

“To copy others is necessary. To steal from others is artistic.” – Andrei Tarkovsky

“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.” – Voltaire

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion.” – Martha Graham

“The worst originality is dullness.” – Edith Sitwell

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent van Gogh

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

“You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.” – John Mason

“Art happens when the artist forgets the audience.” – Chuck Palahniuk

“True art transmits emotion and feels alive.” – Ai Weiwei

“Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.” – Jean Cocteau

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay

“Solitude is the soil in which genius is planted.” – A.C. Benson

“I shut my eyes in order to see.” – Paul Gauguin

“In silence, I have sometimes found answers.” – Mother Teresa

“The impulse to create begins – often terribly and fearfully – in a dark unease.” – Agnes Martin

“All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” – Ram Dass

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.” – May Sarton

“Sometimes I need what only solitude can give me: peace.” – Patti Smith

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” – Michel de Montaigne

“Reflection is the lamp of the heart.” – Al-Ghazali

“I think alone, therefore I exist.” – Simone de Beauvoir

“In order to be open to creativity, one must have chaos.” – Erika Eichenseer

“Love is the supreme reality and beauty its highest visible form.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

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

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“Art is an explosion of the heart.” – Amadeo Modigliani

“Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.” – Pablo Casals

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

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

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

“Painting is poetry seen rather than felt.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it.” – Vincent van Gogh

“Art is the only way we can whisper our dreams and have them heard.” – Laurie Anderson

“Feelings are much easier to express through music than words.” – Yoko Ono

“Legacy is not leaving something for people. It’s leaving something in people.” – Peter Drucker

“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.” – Michelangelo

“Art endures while empires fall.” – Norman Mailer

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

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

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

“An artist’s job is to deepen the mystery.” – Francis Bacon

“Art is the only immortality.” – Henry Moore

“The arts are not a pastime or a luxury. They are an essential part of the human experience.” – Yo-Yo Ma

“A picture is a poem without words.” – Horace

“Artists plant seeds that grow into cultural forests.” – Unknown

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

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk.” – Mark Zuckerberg

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs

“Art challenges society; society reforms art.” – Banksy

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” – Frank Zappa

“To innovate, you must experiment. If you know in advance it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.” – Jeff Bezos

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” – Julia Cameron

“Mistakes are proof that you are trying.” – Marie Forleo

“Art is rebellion.” – Man Ray

“Break the rules, then you can improve the rules.” – Paul Arden

“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.” – Arthur C. Clarke

“If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.” – Sir Ken Robinson

“Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.” – Khalil Gibran

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” – John Keats

“Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature.” – Susan Sontag

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

“The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.” – Pablo Picasso

“Art lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” – Albert Einstein

“Art is not freedom from discipline, but disciplined freedom.” – John Cage

“Truth, like gold, is not the growth of a day.” – John Dryden

“The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.” – Anton Chekhov

“Art reveals truth, and truth demands expression.” – Unknown

“We live in a world starved for beauty and desperate for truth.” – Makoto Fujimura