Creative excellence part 2.

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science. If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity. Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self. Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. Everyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together.
The world is but a canvas to the imagination.

Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create. The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas. The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity.

There is nothing new except what has been forgotten. Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works ... images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models -- surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works -- promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations. A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely . . . but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude . . .