The impresario's job is to pick the right people who can pick the right people. He picks the people who can pick artists and relate to them. People who know what the market craves.

Creativity is the crucial variable in the process of turning knowledge into value

Creativity, my students learn, is as natural a function of the mind as breathing or digestion are natural functions of the body.

You are able to create an environment so that the creative process can take place and that you can get people to perform at their highest levels.

Improvisation in the jazz sense - like the business sense - is not formless. It is built on a skill set. Jazz, for example, involves selecting a tune.

The challenge is to manage creative people so that the output is fruitful. The challenge is not to have an open environment and simply let them do whatever they want.

The mark of the developed intellect is that it could accommodate two contradictory ideas at the same time.

A pioneering and invaluable work about what it really takes to build innovation capability in society.

You are able to monitor and police your standards of quality once you have defined them.

If you are at Coca-Cola, the creative challenge is one of maintaining - rather than creating - a tremendous level of consumption for your products.

Tunes have notes and tempos and rules. If the tune is "All the Things You Are," you have to adhere to its structure and to the tradition behind that structure.

The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.

Holy words and pure and goodly deeds ascend unto the heaven of celestial glory.

When in doubt, choose greatness.

I'm a natural. That's why I make the big bucks.

Endurance is the crowning quality.

I have a lot of cultural references that have amassed in my brain like shrapnel over the years that are meaningful to me.

They don't understand that I'm just choosing to be dumb. I'm not dumb. I'm just choosing not to be smart at the moment, but if I put in effort, then I could be really smart, but I choose not to.

I think that's what being a chef is all about: camaraderie and teamwork. I never feel that it should be so cutthroat that you can't help the other chefs.

I was a guinea pig for some hoodlums who thought they could hurt me and frighten me and keep other Negro entertainers from the South.

And we've got to ask ourselves some very serious questions as to whether or not certain religious leaders, in terms of raising money - I hate to bring this up - are pushing hot buttons.