inspiration from quotes
I love reading, rereading, and collecting quotes that make me think—and act.
Here are a few of my favorites (so far).
If I don’t have blue, I’ll just use red.
Pablo Picasso
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective not the truth.
Marcus Aurelius
How difficult it is to be simple.
Vincent van Gogh
I hope to arrive to my death, late, in love and a little drunk.
Atticus
Don’t wait for inspiration, it comes while working.
Henri Matisse
If there are waves, go surfing.
Surfers proverb
If there’s no wind, row.
Latin Proverb
DO N’T
QU IT
Do or do not. There is no try.
Yoda
They did not know it was impossible so they did it.
Mark Twain
I have a dream.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Believe you can and you’re halfway there.
Theodore Roosevelt
If you can dream it, you can do it.
Walt Disney
Logic will get you from A to B.
Imagination will take you everywhere.
Albert Einstein
If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.
Banksy
Do more things that make you forget to check your phone.
an addict
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
Walt Disney
Art can actually serve as a sort of intellectual and emotional itching powder to make you understand the world in another way.
Lars Strannegård
President of the Stockholm School of Economics
I paint what I like, when I like, and where I like.
David Hockney
Don’t think about making art, just get it done.
Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it.
While they are deciding, make even more art.
Andy Warhol
Art is not meant to match your curtains; it’s meant to speak to your soul.
LeRoy Neiman
The artist doesn’t have to explain a damn thing.
David Lynch
I don’t know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.
Frank Gehry
When you’re being creative, nothing is wrong.
John Cleese
It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
Pablo Picasso
The creative adult is the child who survived.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Judge me for how good my good ideas are, not how bad my bad ideas are.
Matt Damon & Ben Affleck when writing Good Will Hunting
The brave may not live forever – But the cautious do not live at all.
Richard Branson
Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
Banksy
The best art divides the audience.
Rick Rubin
All great contemporary artists, schooled or not, are essentially self-taught and are de-skilling like crazy.I don’t look for skill in art… skill has nothing to do with technical proficiency… I’m interested in people who rethink skill, who redefine or reimagine it: an engineer, say, who builds rockets from rocks.
Jerry Saltz, art critic
If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.
Marc Chagall
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
James Whistler
Without labor, nothing prospers.
Sophocles
Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
Stephen King
Talent needs to be seen working.
Johan Cruijf
Nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.
John Cleese
Whatever you’re doing today, do it with the confidence of a 4 year old in a batman t-shirt.
😉
What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan
I love learning, but hate being taught.
Winston Churchill
Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.
Benjamin Franklin
Silence your mind, pick up a pencil and draw.
…
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
Pablo Picasso
Paint first, then think.
David M. Kessler
Don’t talk. I can’t hear myself see.
Jerry Saltz, art critic on looking at art
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.
Michelangelo
Football is simple. The hardest thing there is, is playing simple football.
‘Voetbal is simpel. Het moeilijkste wat er is, is simpel voetballen.’
Johan Cruijf
Everything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.
J.K. Rowling
You become what you give your attention to.
Epictetus
Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.
…
You’re not sitting in traffic – you are traffic.
Seth Godin
Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.
Will Rogers
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
Maya Angelou
The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
Ernest Hemingway
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Soren Kierkegaard
I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
Vincent van Gogh
It’s better to burn out than to fade away.
Neil Young
Liever opgebrand dan uitgedoofd.
‘rather burnt out than extinguished’
Jules Deelder, Dutch poet
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
Marcus Aurelius
Don’t bend. Don’t water it down. Don’t try to make it logical. Don’t edit your own soul according to fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
Franz Kafka
Life isn’t about finding yourself.
Life is about creating yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
Alan Watts
If it is not right, do not do it.
If it is not true, do not say it.
Marcus Aurelius
Impossible is just an opinion.
Paulo Coelho
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.
Steve Jobs
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
Steve Jobs
Every disadvantage has its advantage.
‘Elk nadeel heb z’n voordeel.’
Johan Cruijf
The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.
Frank Sinatra
Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now.
The conditions are always impossible.
Doris Lessing
If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.
Tony Gaskins
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Man plans, and the gods laugh.
‘Ο άνθρωπος κάνει σχέδια και οι θεοί γελάνε.’
Greek philosophy
Artists give people something they didn’t know they were missing.
Daniel Pink
Energy and art go where they will.
Jerry Saltz, art critic
Comparison is the death of joy.
Mark Twain
We suffer more in imagination than in reality.
Seneca
Everything is hard before it is easy.
Goethe
It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
Epictetus
Work every day.
No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.
Ernest Hemingway
Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Walk beside me; just be my friend.
Albert Camus
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I’m free.
Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα. Δε φοβούμαι τίποτα. Είμαι λέφτερος.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
General George S. Patton
If you think you’re too small to make a difference, you haven’t spent a night with a mosquito.
African proverb
Drawing is rather like playing chess, your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.
David Hockney
The most important decision you will ever make is to be in a good mood.
Voltaire
People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.
Winnie the Pooh
You only see it when you understand it.
‘Je gaat het pas zien als je het doorhebt.’
Johan Cruijf
We are our choices.
J.P. Sartre
Memento Mori
Memento Vivere
Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson
