Improvisation is empowering because it welcomes the unknown. And since what's impossible is always unknown, it allows me to believe I can cheat the impossible.
Creative exploration [is] impossible, without (humble) acknowledgement of the unknown.
The absurd . . . the fact that with God all things are possible. The absurd is not one of the factors which can be discriminated within the proper compass of the understanding: it is not identical with the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen.
Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.
I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.
Many live in dread of what is coming. Why should we? The unknown puts adventure into life. ... The unexpected around the corner gives a sense of anticipation and surprise. Thank God for the unknown future.
I've learned you can always achieve more than you thought you could. There are moments when I've walked off the court, and I'm like, 'I don't know how I won that match.' It was actually impossible, but it happened, and then you realize that you can push yourself much further than you ever thought, and you can make the impossible happen.
I want to make words out of life. That's bigger than me. That's as big a creative force as - bigger than, for me, even having children. That felt more accidental - wonderful, but accidental.
To be and to be creative are synonymous. It is impossible to be and not to be creative. But that impossible thing has happened, that ugly phenomenon has happened, because all your creative sources have been plugged, blocked, destroyed, and your whole energy has been forced into some activity that the society thinks is going to pay.
Creativity shouldn't be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn't be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other 'creative types.' The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code. At any given moment, the brain is automatically forming new associations, continually connecting an everyday x to an unexpected y.
It is absurd to expect governments to descend gradually, step-by-step into barbarism - as if there was a train schedule to political hell and people could get off at any stop along the way.
The most important lesson of American history is the promise of the unexpected. None of our ancestors would have imagined settling way over here on this unknown continent. So we must continue to have society that is hospitable to the unexpected, which allows possibilities to develop beyond our own imaginings.
So you set out to travel to Rome... and end up in Istanbul. You set off for Japan... and you end up on a train across Siberia. The journey, not the destination, becomes a source of wonder.
Our schools offer no conception of the scientific process of discovery. They do not encourage creative thought, in fact, they stifle it through too much rigidity in teaching. If we set out to give as little help as possible to originality in science, we could hardly devise a better plan than our education system. Youngsters ought to be told what is unknown about ourselves and our universe as well as what is known.
History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.
The trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off