‘Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you’ – 70 quotes on creativity, technology and change

In this compilation of 70 inspiring quotes, we draw on the books by creativity expert Rod Judkins. Expanding your creative quotient is key for success in a world of rapid and global change.

A creative mind is imaginative, and interprets the world in unusual ways. Ideators and innovators change the world through their creations, but the journey is hard and full of disappointment as well.

The task for innovators today is not just to create new technologies and applications, but also to help guard against threats and excesses. Here are 70 quotes from creativity expert Rod Judkins’ books, on a wide range of themes to jog your imagination: art, design, time, character, and technology change.

Rod is a creativity expert and lecturer at Central Saint Martin's College of Art; he is also a blogger at Psychology Today. See my reviews of his books Ideas are Your Only Currency and The Art of Creative Thinking, as well as the related titles 12 Steps to Creativity (Michael Atavar), Creativity Now (Jurgen Wolff), and Steal like an Artist (Austin Kleon).

See also YourStory’s pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups’ as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).

The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do. - Sarah Ban Breathnach

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. - Carl Jung

I don't design clothes, I design dreams. - Ralph Lauren

There is no better designer than nature. - Alexander McQueen

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. - Massimo Vignelli

The great person is ahead of their time, the smart make something out of it, and the blockhead, sets themselves against it. - Jean Baudrillard

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. - Albert Einstein

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly. - Richard Bach

Time is the most precious gift you can give to someone, because if you give someone your time, it's a part of your life that you will never get back. - Gloria Tesch

A watch, it's a sign of the times. ― Jarod Kintz

Clock measurement is not time itself. In fact, so opposed are they that one could argue the clock is not a synonym, but the opposite of time. - Jay Griffiths

If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future? - Stephen Hawking

Where there is power, there is resistance. ― Michel Foucault

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness. - John Steinbeck

I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any. - Tommy Cooper

Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another. - Reinhold Niebuhr

The more I had to act like a saint, the more I felt like being a sinner. - Max von Sydow

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. - Abraham Lincoln

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. - Edgar Degas

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. - Stephen Sondheim

The history of art is the history of iconoclasm, the history of some new voice saying that everything you know is wrong. ― Richard Powers

We're only here once and I want to get as much out of it possible. And as an artist, my job is to be as much me as possible. - Grayson Perry

If you want to change your art, change your habits. - Clement Greenberg

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall. - Che Guevara

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith

My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them. - Mitch Hedberg

Obsolescence never meant the end of anything, it's just the beginning. - Marshall McLuhan

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Values are like fingerprints. Nobody's are the same, but you leave 'em all over everything you do. - Elvis Presley

I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either. - Jack Benny

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. - John Lennon

It is our virtue to be infinitely varied. The worst tyranny is uniformity. - George William Russell

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. – Plutarch

We no longer live life. We consume it. – Vicki Rubin

Life is either a great adventure or nothing. - Helen Keller

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant. – Horace

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. - Samuel Beckett

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune. - Henry David Thoreau

It's the job that's never started that takes longest to finish. - J.R.R. Tolkien

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull. - W. C. Fields

You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page. - Jodi Picoult

The day I got my first letter from a fan, I felt like I'd been touched by an angel. - Selena Gomez

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. - Rudyard Kipling

All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography. J. M. Coetzee

The idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss. - J. K. Rowling

A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him. - Walter Mosley

People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book. - Malcolm X

Writing Charles Dickens’ biography was like writing five biographies. - Claire Tomalin

I do not think of type as something that should be readable. It should be beautiful. - Ed Benguiat

Sometimes incompetence is useful. It helps you keep an open mind. - Roberto Cavalli

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury. - Charlie Chaplin

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. - Galileo

Chance favors the connected mind. - Steven Johnson

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it. - Margaret Fuller

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. - Dorothy Parker

Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent. - Christopher Isherwood

Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality. - Arthur Koestler

Open the window of fantasy to know what reality can bring. - Raul D. Arellano

Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one. - Judith Martin

Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it. - Max Frisch

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers. - Sydney J. Harris

The computer allows me to execute my ideas at the speed I think them. - Will.i.am

Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer; art is everything else. - Donald Knuth

Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road. - Stewart Brand

With the advent of genetic engineering the time required for the evolution of new species may literally collapse. - Dee Hock

The biggest competitive advantage is to do the right thing at the worst time. - Bill Hewlett and David Packard

If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet. - Niels Bohr

The discovery of nuclear reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than the discovery of matches. We only must do everything in our power to safeguard against its abuse. - Albert Einstein

Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you – be futurewise. - Patrick Dixon