The Age of Ideas Quotes

“Art is the expression of human creativity and imagination, which produces works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty. It’s emotional.

Commerce is the activity of buying and selling, particularly on a grand scale. It’s black and white: either a purchase is made or it isn’t. It’s practical.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Experienced creatives develop the ability to manifest their breed of creativity consistently over a period of time. Simply put, it’s the difference between a one-hit wonder and Michael Jackson.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“In today’s market, anything that isn’t differentiated through creativity or a 10x technology will be immediately commodified by the industrial system. The only way to sustainably incite your audience to take action is to inspire them with meaningful purpose.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“The meaning behind your passion, whether it be for hospitality, law, or hot sauce, now translates into value. In the Age of Ideas this is what the market demands, and you have the power to give it to them by unlocking your unique creative potential.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“When Disney’s children were very young, he’d tried to take
them to places where their imaginations could run wild. But every
carnival or fair seemed to be dirty, poorly run, and filled with vice.
Walt wanted to create a place where people could take their family
and forget the concerns of the everyday world—a place beautiful,
safe, and filled with endless wonder. So at about the same time
that he had started selling assets and conserving his capital, he
pulled aside one of his art directors and had him begin working on
concept sketches for a new kind of amusement park. The sketches
started to illustrate the vision he had in his head, a utopian world
where guests would enter a fairytale world.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Quite often, the discussion of purpose in an organizational setting is diluted by groupthink, as most people don’t feel comfortable giving their honest opinion, especially when doing so could impact their employment or financial status. Therefore, organizations must work to find ways to create safe environments for honest sharing and empower key stakeholders to make decisions that aren’t always popular—because to do something truly special, you must be as honest, defined, and differentiated as possible.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“In simplest terms, you won’t be able to unlock your creative potential, achieve sustainable success, or even be fundamentally happy unless you align your internal and external worlds—unless you’re true to yourself. Therefore, to begin the journey of discovering your purpose, you must focus on what matters to you internally, not externally. And the first step in this process is to eliminate obstacles that prevent you from hearing the signal above the noise. These obstacles include things such as commercial concerns, financial motivations, comparing yourself to someone else, and other manifestations of ego.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Generally, when someone is unhappy or lacking meaningful sustenance in their life or business, it’s because their internal self isn’t in harmony with their external self.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“The secret to a fulfilling life is to discover what excites you, what you love to do, and then spend your days passionately pursuing, sharing, and manifesting that purpose with all your heart. And purpose is exactly that—it’s “the reason for which something exists.” It’s the why behind everything you do.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Employees are people. Customers are people. Same for entrepreneurs, business leaders. Conclusion? Companies are created by people and run by people, to service the needs and wants of people. Despite this fairly obvious observation, we tend to manage business and personal matters differently.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“When artists start out, no one knows who they are or what they do. Despite this, they start manifesting their vision. A painter begins painting and sharing those paintings with the market. Maybe she sells a cou- ple at a low price, or maybe she can’t sell any. So what does she do? Somehow she begins to share the story behind her art. Why does she paint? Where did she come from? What’s her inspiration? What’s the meaning behind her work? Why does she need—not want, need—to paint? And over time people hear her story: some connect with it and others don’t, but the ones who do connect, who see a reflection of themselves in her story, become her tribe. Maybe eventually she gets a gallerist, manager, patron, or publicist, and they share her resonant story with even more people, growing her tribe. Then what happens? Though the paintings are the same, by combining the work with an authentic, resonant story, our painter magically creates value and demand for her art grows.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“...creators must deeply believe in what they’re manifesting in order for others to believe. Today’s term of choice for this conviction is authenticity. Walk into any boardroom nowadays and you’ll hear executives asking how they can make their products or services more authentic. The chal- lenge is that there’s no way to be authentic without actually doing something that’s genuine. You must believe in what you’re creating and sharing with the world. Authenticity is exactly that—the point at which you manifest your deep beliefs into something tangible. Therefore, in the modern market there’s more value than ever placed on the level of belief that creators have in their creation.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Despite our efforts to be practical and logical, humans remain emotional beings, and we all crave meaningful emotional interaction with other humans. We don’t just want meatballs, we want Grandma’s meatballs; we don’t just want a smartphone, we want to Think Different; we don’t just want to go to any old amusement park, we want to go to the Magic Kingdom; and we don’t want water, we want artesian water from Fiji. The story, the experience—that’s what is critical to creating, and the emotional connection established through that art is what drives commerce in the contemporary market.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“To manifest your creativity you must believe deeply in the emotional elements and patiently invest in them. Once you find your creativity, it must be encouraged and enhanced, not controlled. The best of the best—the Apples, Nikes, Michael Jordans, Andy Warhols, Meryl Streeps of the world—have it; they protect it, believe in it, and as long as they stay true to their essence they’ll continue to reap the benefits that come with creative thinking and living.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Creativity, like love, is entirely emotional, meaning it doesn’t have a physical presence. That’s what makes it so extraordinary, and yet so difficult for so many to believe in or understand. It makes a lot of very smart people uncomfortable; they have an intense desire for creativity in their lives or businesses, but they can’t just purchase it like a material thing or control it like a process in a factory.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“The way to create value in the Age of Ideas is to identify, manifest, and share your creativity.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Creativity is that special something. It can take you from good to great, from want to need, from admiration to infatuation. It is intangible, emotional, and premium-worthy. It’s honest. It’s simple. It’s generous. It’s beautiful to watch and effortless to enjoy. Once you get in touch with your creativity, nothing else is ever the same. It is an energy deep within, one that connects us all.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Bottled water is another example. Free, high-quality water is available in much of the developed world. But the developed world is exactly where the majority of bottled water is consumed. In 2012, in the U.S. alone, we spent $11.8 billion dollars on bottled water. Because packaging is a fixed price and water is a low-priced com- modity, what exactly are we paying the rest of the money for? The answer is that much of the value is tied up in the brand, the idea, how it makes you feel, the creativity.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“It was a memorable night for a burgeoning community of food enthusiasts at exactly the right moment. I was ecstatic. For the first time in my adult life, I was doing something purely for the joy of sharing my passion with the world, rather than to stroke my ego or make money. It felt like I was finally living my purpose. I was manifesting my dreams, making tangible an inspiration that came from deep within.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Our endless desire for more must be counterbalanced by the cultivated appreciation of what we have, for without that appreciation, the personal fulfillment we all seek isn’t possible.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“The swoosh is worth more than the sneaker.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“The key to achieving harmony and to manifesting your creative potential is to allow the surrounding energy to take you to where you need to be at that moment in time. You must trust the energy. Instead of fighting where the world is taking you, make an effort to understand why; look inside your- self to see the bigger picture.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Sometimes, when we least expect it, energy moves like a tornado, in directions we don’t expect and that can feel negative. Our plan and harmony are disrupted, and then the question becomes, what do we do?

The natural reaction when something happens that’s unplanned is to panic or “fight the energy.” But that’s exactly the type of action you don’t want to take, because it’s in exact opposition to the harmony we’re aiming to achieve. So what can we do instead? There’s only one answer: accept it. Pause, take a deep breath, and trust that everything that happens is in your best interests.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“A harmonious state of being is defined as a state in which your internal needs are aligned with the actions you take and the surrounding energy of the world. The only way to create this harmony is by aligning your priorities with what you do every day.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Before humans started messing around with the system, nature existed in harmony for millions of years—a beautiful symphony of seasonal change, birth and death, creation and destruction. This same harmony that drives the natural world applies to the intangible, emotional world of humans. We, too, must achieve harmony between all the elements of our lives, between the internal self and the external world.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“WE ALL HAVE PRIMARY MOTIVATIONS THAT EXIST BENEATH
THE SUPERFICIAL ELEMENTS OF LIFE, MAKING US WHO WE ARE. THE KEY NOW WILL BE TO MANIFEST YOUR PURPOSE IN PURSUITS THAT ARE
A REFLECTION OF THAT PURPOSE.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Your purpose is the emotional and spiritual energy that surrounds the commercial aspects of what you do; it can’t be to make a lot of money or sell a lot of widgets. While generating a significant financial return may be a result of pursuing your purpose, it can’t be why you do what you do. Money isn’t what the journey’s about. We aren’t here to survive; we’re here to self-actualize and thrive.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“While making inexpensive furniture may be what IKEA does prac- tically, the vision of “creating a better everyday life” for people has emotional resonance we can rally behind. These are the words of a movement, and I would argue that without them, Ikea would be much less successful. Combine commitment to a meaningful purpose with flawless execution and it makes the difference between the world’s largest furniture retailer and a local purveyor of cheap junk.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Who we are to the outside world and whether we are able to manifest our purpose is the result of work done when no one is looking. Every decision we make has positive and negative implications for our future and therefore must involve a strong framework, one that guides our choices and focuses our energy.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Discovery occurs when the creator(s) looks within, and creative outputs improve as self-awareness increases. The more you understand about yourself and what is important to you, the more meaningfully you can share that with the world.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential