QUOTES FROM THE SEPTEMBER 2006 "CREATIVE WISDOM WORKSHOP" AT THE HARTFORD PUBLIC LIBRARY

"Every human being is an artist ... called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and condition our lives." -- Joseph Beuys, German Artist

"Creativity is the experience of expressing and actualizing one's individual identity in an integrated form in communion with oneself, with nature and with other persons." -- Clark Moustakas, Psychologist and Author

"'Communion with nature' is a major force in the urge for creative expression." -- Berenice Bleedorn, Educator and Author, Education is Everybody's Business

"Who is the Man, the Artist? He is the unspoiled core of everyman before he is choked by schooling, training, conditioning until the artist shrivels up and is forgotten. ... And yet that core is never killed completely. At times it responds to Nature, to beauty, to Life, suddenly aware again of being in the presence of a Mystery that baffles understanding and which only has to be glimpsed to renew our spirit and to make us feel that life is a supreme gift." -- Frederick Franck, Author, Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." -- George Bernard Shaw

Change goes on. Surely the central task of our learning is not to confirm what is but to equip ourselves to meet that change and to imagine what could be ... recognizing the value in what we encounter and steadily working it into our lives and visions. -- Adapted from Mary Catherine Bateson, Anthropologist and Author, Composing a Life

"It has been said that most outstanding creative achievers seem to be possessed by a purpose and to be '[people] of destiny'." Creative people "need some purpose which is worthy of the enthusiastic devotion they seem capable of giving." -- E. Paul Torrance, Educator and Author

"People are not really afraid of dying. They're afraid of never having lived, not ever having deeply considered their life's higher purpose, and not ever having stepped into that purpose and at least tried to make a difference in this world." -- Joseph Jaworski, Author, Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership

Find out more information about the "Creative Wisdom Workshop" at the Hartford Public Library.