Incubation Quotes

• I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon sum rather difficult topic, the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity-the greatest intensity of which I am capable-for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak (to my subconscious mind) that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done.

  Bertrand Russell

  Writing, Thinking, Order

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• It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

  Gertrude Stein

  Time, Women, Philosophical

  Everybody's Autobiography (1937) ch. 2

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• There is a moment of conception and a moment of birth, but between them there is a long period of gestation.

  Jonas Salk

  Gestation Period, Long, Birth

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• Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

  Alan Watts

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Freedom

  Alan W. Watts (2011). “The Way of Zen”, p.157, Vintage

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• The creative act always requires a stepping back. It's called the incubation period. The incubation period - one of the four phases of creativity - is when you're not consciously thinking of a problem, and you're letting it marinate. So this is why you hear time and again, people saying they had that "Eureka" moment in the bath, like Archimedes, or in the shower, or while going for a walk or in a coffeehouse.

  Eric Weiner

  Creativity, Thinking, People

  "How your neighborhood coffee shop is brewing geniuses". Interview with Paul Solman, www.pbs.org. January 21, 2016.

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• One should never impose one's views on a problem; one should rather study it, and in time a solution will reveal itself.

  Albert Einstein

  Creativity, Views, Creative Solutions

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• Problems, however, are rarely solved on the spur of the moment. They must be organized and dissected, then key issues isolated and defined. A period of gestation then sets in, during which these issues are mulled over. You put them in your mind and consciously or unconsciously work at them at odd hours of the day or night - even at work. It is somewhat analogous to trying to place a name on the face of someone you've met before. Often the solution to a problem comes to you in much the same way you eventually recall the name.

  William Redington Hewlett

  Night, Keys, Gestation Period

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• The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it, and go about your business. Suddenly, the idea will come through. It was there all the time.

  Henry Ford

  Air, Ideas, Want

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• Phases of the creative process: Preparation-gathering impressions Incubation-letting go of certainties Immersion/Illumination-creative intervention/risk Revision-conscious structuring and editing of creative material.

  Gail Sheehy

  Letting Go, Creativity, Illumination

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• You cannot go into the womb to form the child; it is there and makes itself and comes forth whole-and there it is and you have made it and have felt it, but it has come itself.

  Gertrude Stein

  Children, Form, Made

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• The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry, "Here we are." You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows when they could have come.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Thinking, Hands

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• Ideas, like young wine, should be put in storage and taken up again only after they have been allowed to ferment and to ripen.

  Richard Strauss

  Taken, Wine, Ideas

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• I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain.

  Claude Monet

  Ideas, Brain, Settling

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• Generating ideas is not a problem. Incubation is. Acceleration is.

  Rita Gunther McGrath

  Ideas, Problem, Acceleration

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• You never lose a dream, it just incubates as a hobby.

  Larry Page

  Dream, Loss, Entrepreneur

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I back away from conscious thought and turn the problem over to my unconscious mind. It will scan a broader array of patterns and find some new close fits from other information stored in my brain.

  Arthur Fry

  Brain, Mind, Patterns

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• You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.

  Joseph Campbell

  Morning, Time, Stress

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.115, Anchor

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• The first mistake is believing that transformational initiatives can be accomplished through normal channels and means. This cannot be done because there are too many conflicting interests that are competing to impede. The second is mistaking incubation for transformation and concluding that failure to achieve escape velocity is due to lack of innovation. It never is. It is always do to lack of leadership focus and, especially, fortitude.

  Geoffrey Moore

  Mistake, Believe, Mean

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• A young man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on.

  William McFee

  Men, Ideas, Young

  "Harbours of Memory" by William McFee, (p. 236), 1921.

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• Do not compute the totality of your poultry population until all the manifestations of incubation have been entirely completed.

  William Jennings Bryan

  Population, Poultry, Manifestation

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• Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.

  Jean Cocteau

  Believe, Fall, Inspiration

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• All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.

  Grant Wood

  Ideas, Cows, Good Ideas

  Thomas Hoving, Grant Wood (2005). “American Gothic: The Biography of Grant Wood's American Masterpiece”, Chamberlain Brothers

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• You've been thinking about something without willing to for a long time...Then, all of a sudden, the problem is opened to you in a flash and you suddenly see the answer.

  Rita Levi-Montalcini

  Thinking, Long, Answers

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• The "germ," wherever gathered, has ever been for me, "the germ of a story," and most of the stories strained to shape under my hand have sprung from a single small seed, a seed as remote and windblown as a casual hint.

  Henry James

  Hands, Hints, Stories

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• I have wished to see chemistry applied to domestic objects, to malting, for instance, brewing, making cider, to fermentation and distillation generally, to the making of bread, butter, cheese, soap, to the incubation of eggs, &c.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Science, Eggs, Cheese

  Thomas Jefferson (1855). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.73

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