Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time... Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.
Societies are composed of individuals and are good only insofar as they help individuals to realize their potentialities and to lead a happy and creative life.
The whole idea is that the combination of tight activity and slack activity allows me to be both productive and creative at the same time. In the four years that I am actually working in a proper job, I am earning money and I'm also writing with a lot of discipline on the side.
The key to growth is quite simple: creative men with money. The cause of stagnation is similarly clear: depriving creative individuals of financial power.
For basically three years, I was doing 'Catfish' and 'We Are Your Friends' at the same time - it was like straddling two very long-term creative marriages. And when you're in a long-term creative commitment, you tend to daydream and fantasize about smaller creative flings that you want to have.
To be creative, a person has to internalize the entire system that makes creativity possible. Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals.
If you make a film set in London or in Pakistan or wherever, the thing that interests me is the relationships between individuals - individuals and society, individuals and their family, their girlfriend or boyfriend, it's all the same idea.
Trusting people to be creative and constructive when given more freedom does not imply an overly optimistic belief in the perfectibility of human nature. It is, rather, belief that the inevitable errors and sins of the human condition are far better overcome by individuals working together in an environment of trust and freedom and mutual respect than by individuals working under a multitude of rules, regulations, and restraints imposed upon them by another group of imperfect individuals.
Through our own creative experience we came to know that the real tradition in art is not housed only in museums and art galleries and in great works of art; it is innate in us and can be galvanized into activity by the power of creative endeavour in our own day, and in our own country, by our own creative individuals in the arts.
Tocqueville talked about "ceaseless agitation," citizens constantly use their institutions, constantly challenging them, constantly insisting upon their rights. It's also individuals taking responsibility for other individuals, recognition that no democracy works if they're weaklings.
The main thing about SpongeBob is that he celebrates innocence. His outlook on life is very optimistic and earnest, and I think kids relate to that. He has a creative spark in the same way children are very creative from an open and naive perspective.
When creative individuals are given a stage, they have the power to advance humanity
Meaning and value depend on human mind space and the commitment of time and energy by very smart people to a creative enterprise. And the time, energy, and brain power of smart, creative people are not abundant. These are the things that are scare, and in some sense they become scarcer as the demand for these talents increases in proportion to the amount of abundant computing power available.
Only in a free society do individuals have the best chance to seek virtue, strive for excellence, improve their economic well-being, and achieve personal happiness. The worthy goals of civilization can only be achieved by freedom-loving individuals. When government uses force, liberty is sacrificed and the goals are lost. It is freedom that is the source of all creative energy.
What you really have to do, if you want to be creative, is to unlearn all the teasing and censoring that you've experienced throughout your life. If you are truly a creative person, you know that feeling insecure and lonely is par for the course. You can't have it both ways: You can't be creative and conform, too. You have to recognize that what makes you different also makes you creative.
There are two big benefits from moving conversations from a mode where you're addressing individuals, or groups of individuals, to addressing a channel which is a topic, a project, a functional discipline, or whatever.
There is really nothing that can be done except by an individual. Only individuals can learn. Only individuals can think creatively. Only individuals can cooperate. Only individuals can combat statism.