Brainstorming Quotes

My ideas often come from strong mental images. When I'm observing some relatively ordinary thing, I'll think, "What if...." and out of that brainstorming a story emerges.

I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block. When I find myself frozen-whether I'm working on a brief passage in a novel or brainstorming about an entire book-it's usually because I'm trying to shoehorn an idea into the passage or story where it has no place.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Microsoft is a company that manages imagination.

Imagination is the living power and prime agent of all human perception.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

A successful work of art is not one which resolves objective contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure.

I do a lot of brainstorming with my editors.

Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

The ultimate solutions to problems are rational; the process of finding them is not.

Knowledge is being applied to knowledge itself. It is now fast becoming the one factor in production, sidelining both capital and labour.

Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

The map is not the territory.

Meet regularly with your business team and brainstorm. Intricate business problems are mostly resolved at brainstorming sessions.

Intelligence is something we are born with. Thinking is a skill that must be learned.

To take the difficulties, setbacks and sorrows of life as a challenge to overcome makes us stronger, rather than unjust punishment which should not happen to us, requires faith and courage.

To ask the hard question is simple.

Painting, to me, is a unique experience. Each work is a surprise and has its own personal and intuitive meaning. After brainstorming feelings and memories, each painting evolves freely and independently.

I've always loved brainstorming with other writers, and I consider having my work critiqued a part of that brainstorming.

The obvious is always least understood.

A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.

You'll learn more in a day talking to customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research.

A person who can create ideas worthy of note is a person who has learned much from others.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

Change only favours minds that are diligently looking and preparing for discovery.

Ideas shape the course of history.

It is easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one.

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.

If you wish to advance into the infinite, explore the finite in all directions.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

I sometimes compare my brainstorming on paper to the drilling of oil wells. The only way to strike oil is to drill a lot of wells.

Imagination is the beginning of creation.

Two heads are definitely better than one and by sourcing ideas from each other, you have a better chance of coming up with a strategy that will allow your business to overcome a setback or challenge.

The smell of roses, my children's bright eyes and smiles, laughing with my husband, walking on the beach, using my hands to do crafts or play guitar, brainstorming, and drinking coffee, really good coffee.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.

There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.

There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all.

When I returned as CEO in 2008, Starbucks had forgotten that meaningful innovations balance an organization's heritage with modern-day relevance and market differentiation, so we had to reorient. In one brainstorming session, we visited and observed great retailers, then asked ourselves, 'If Starbucks did not exist, what type of coffee experience would we create?

Held in the palms of thousands of disgruntled people over the centuries have been ideas worth millions - if they only had taken the first step and then followed through.

Writers know - especially new writers - [that] a lot of it [creative process] is the prewriting stage, the talking, brainstorming, the narrative arc and the character sketches.

Psychologists usually offer three explanations for the failure of group brainstorming. The first is social loafing: in a group, some individuals tend to sit back and let others do the work. The second is production blocking: only one person can talk or produce an idea at once, while the other group members are forced to sit passively. And the third is evaluation apprehension, meaning the fear of looking stupid in front of one's peers.

There's a school of thought that says if you legalize drugs it will solve the problem. We're all good liberals, we said let's do it and see what happens. We wanted to be honest about it. So in our brainstorming sessions we'd say, what if? The finding was that all the negative things came out also. The answer is that we didn't believe in the full legalization of drugs. But we don't believe in the criminalization of drugs, either.

I'm always working on something. I wish I had more time for free-thinking and brainstorming new ideas. That's not to say my mind doesn't wander, but I find myself wishing for more of that kind of time.

The only joy in the world is to begin.

No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive.

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.