“The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites.”

— Carl Jung

“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”

— Steve Jobs

“You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.”

— Albert Einstein

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

— Steve Jobs

“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

“If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.”

— Alfred Noble

“Throughout history, people with new ideas—who think differently and try to change things—have always been called troublemakers.”

— Richelle Mead, Shadow Kiss

“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and, therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

J.K. Rowling

“Innovation is an evolutionary process, so it’s not necessary to be radical all the time.”

Marc Jacobs

“Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to some independent record label people. My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying, “Does it do [x]?”, “Do you plan to add [y]?”.

Finally Jobs said, “Wait wait — put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes could have. So do we. But we don’t want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.”

Derek Sivers