awesome quotes from creativity inc—inspirational quotes from ed catmull

21 Awesome Quotes from Creativity Inc.

by Ed Catmull

“For all the care you put into artistry, visual polish frequently doesn’t matter if you are

getting the story right.”

“Whatever these forces are that make people do dumb things, they are powerful, they are often invisible, and they lurk even in the best of environments.”

“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”

“People need to be wrong as fast as they can. In a battle, if you’re faced with two hills and you’re unsure which one to attack,

the right course of action is to hurry up and choose. If you find out it’s the wrong hill, turn around and attack the other one.”

“It’s folly to think you can avoid change, no matter how much you might want to. But also, to my mind, you shouldn’t want to. There is no growth or success without change.”

“When it comes to creative endeavors, the concept of zero failures is worse than useless. It is

counterproductive.”

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism, designating it so…

“But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the

discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.”

“Fear of change—innate, stubborn, and resistant to reason—is a powerful force. In many ways, it reminded me of musical chairs: We cling as long as possible to the perceived ‘safe’ place that we already know, refusing to loosen our grip until we feel sure another safe place awaits.”

“The unpredictable is the ground on which creativity occurs.”

“To think you can control or prevent random problems by making an

example of someone is naïve and wrongheaded.”

“Disney employees attempted to keep his spirit alive by constantly asking themselves, ‘What would Walt do?’ Perhaps they thought that if they asked that question they would come up with something original, that they would remain true to Walt’s pioneering spirit…

“In fact, this kind of thinking only accomplished the opposite. Because it looked backward, not forward, it tethered the place to the status quo.”

“No one—not Walt, not Steve, not the people of Pixar—ever achieved creative success by simply clinging to what used to work.”

“The past should be our teacher, not our master.”

“When filmmakers, industrial designers, software designers, or people in any other creative profession merely cut up and reassemble what has come before, it gives the illusion of creativity, but it is craft without art. Craft is what we are expected to know; art is the unexpected use of our craft.”

“Companies, like individuals, do not become exceptional by believing they are exceptional but by under- standing the ways in which they aren’t exceptional.”

“‘You can’t manage what you can’t measure’ is a maxim that is taught and believed by many in both the business and education sectors. But in fact, the phrase is ridiculous—something said by people who are unaware of how much is hidden. A large portion of what we manage can’t be measured, and not realizing this has unintended consequences.”

“‘As the composer Philip Glass once said, ‘The real issue is not how do you find your voice, but… getting rid of the damn thing.”

“‘It is difficult sometimes to tell the difference between what is impossible and what is possible (but requires a big reach). At a creative company, mistaking one for the other can be fatal—but getting it right elevates.”

“To keep a creative culture vibrant, we must not be afraid of constant uncertainty. We must accept it, just as we accept the

weather. Uncertainty and change are life’s constants. And that’s the fun part.”

“Trust doesn’t mean that you trust that someone won’t screw up—it means you trust them even when they do screw up.”

“Our problem as managers in creative environments is to protect new ideas from those who don’t understand that in order for greatness to emerge, there must be phases of not-so greatness. Protect the future, not the past.”

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Credits:

All quotes from Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull. All images are the property

of Pixar or Disney Studios.