Jonah Lehrer Quotes

Grit is the stubborn refusal to quit.

To have a style is to be stuck.

What you discover when you look at creativity from the perspective of the brain is that it is universal. We're all creative all of the time, we can't help but be creative.

We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don't know what we're talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.

When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art.

The answer will only arrive after we stop looking for it.

While human nature largely determines how we hear the notes, it is nurture that lets us hear the music.

In fact, the only way to remain creative over time--to not be undone by our expertise--is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don't fully understand.

Rejection process is not fun. It's the red pen on the page, the discarded sketch, sometimes is the only way forward.

there simply is no way to describe the past without lying. Our memories are not like fiction. They are fiction.

You know more than you know.

The best way to solve a problem? Try explaining it to somebody outside your field.

I want to give people theories, I want to expose them to scientific stories that force them to re-evaluate the way they use these three pounds of meat inside their head.

Every creative story is different. And every creative story is the same. There was nothing. Now there is something. It's almost like magic.

...new ideas are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time.

And so we keep on thinking, because the next thought might be the answer.

Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true.

The great ages did not perhaps produce much more talent than ours,' [T.S.] Eliot wrote. 'But less talent was wasted.

It's a hard thing to describe. It's just this sense that you got something to say.

Design is the conscious imposition of meaningful order.

Harlow would later write, "If monkeys have taught us anything, it's that you've got to learn how to love before you learn how to live.

Cities force us to interact with strangers and with the strange. They pry the mind open. And that is why they are the idea that has unleashed so many of our new ideas.

A lie told well is just as good as the truth.

Creativity is a catchall term for a variety of distinct thought processes.

By the age of 3, children from wealthier households hear, on average, about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. The ratio is reversed in households on welfare.

Children can't help but create: they need to put their mind on the page, they want to paint, to sculpt, to write short stories.

Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It's a skill.

The one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know.

The imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.

Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.

The inconsistency of genius is a consistent theme of creativity.

If you're trying to be more creative, one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed.

Insights, after all, come from the overlap between seemingly unrelated thoughts. They emerge when concepts are transposed, when the rules of one place are shifted to a new domain.

The benefit of such horizontal interactions - people sharing knowledge across fields - is that it encourages conceptual blending, which is an extremely important part of the insight process.

In fact, most of us see perseverance as a distinctly uncreative approach, the sort of strategy that people with mediocre ideas are forced to rely on.

The great ages did not perhaps produce much more talent than ours, ' [T.S.] Eliot wrote. 'But less talent was wasted.

...the imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.

Money chases good ideas

We see them most when we are o nnthe outside looking in