7 & 7: Creative vs. Regimented

REFLECTION:

Our humanity is most clearly expressed by our individual creativity. Unique ideas that spring from every spirit carry us beyond the restrictions of time and space and circumstance. They allow us to think beyond the lines of reason and along paths less traveled or never traveled before. They are a form of pleasurable groping, reaching beyond and defying perfect order. They are part of our individual becoming, of our own self-realization. These ideas, or flowing of ideas see perfect order as an unworthy goal and tolerate high levels of imperfection. They allow projection beyond the closed gate of reasoned thought or consistency. Since the ideas that arise are new, or appear new since the same may have been forgotten in another time, another space, they may expect to be opposed by common thinkers and common doers and little minds. For original ideas contradict and break the rules without apology. To be nobody but yourself be prepared to fight, and expect opposition from those who would keep you in a rut, busy, and unable to create moments of excitement out of your own dreams.

MUSES:

Whosoever would be a man must be a non-conformist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

An idea is salvation by imagination.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Think sideways!
Edward de Bono

How do I work? I grope.
Albert Einstein

Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.
Carlos Fuentes

My mother said to me, “If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general, if you become a monk, you’ll end up as the pope.” Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
Pablo Picasso

Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.
Edward de Bono

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
John Locke

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be nobody-but-yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
e.e. cummings

There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency – and a virtue, and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency – and a vice.
Mark Twain

Extreme busyness, whether at school, or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.
Robert Louis Stevenson