Theme 18: Freedom

For me, freedom was voice. It was activating that person within me that was like: I am an individual.

Hip-hop is this culture of determining one’s own story, determining one’s own voice against silence, against marginalization, against sensibilities that are meant to oppress and quiet.

Where is freedom? Well ladies and gentlemen, freedom is in the mind.

Music is my life and life is my music.

Are you doing work that changes the lives of people?

My dream has always been to change the world through images

The more young people who are empowered to dream, the stronger our democracy will be and a stronger world we will have

Why should you sit and say "I am paying Tax, it's enough"?

Why shouldn't your domestic worker's child be a doctor?

When you look at artists, inventors, ordinary people — it always starts with a dream.

What freedom means to me is having the ability to dream

Escribir ficciones es un instinto de todos, todos lo compartimos. No todos tenemos talento para todas las maneras que hay de hacer ficción; hay cientos de maneras de hacer ficción, desde las matemáticas hasta la música.

Sometimes LA has too MUCH freedom--you know, and it feels unstructured and it feels chaotic, but there is a looseness and a freedom here that I find really, I dunno, disconcerting but empowering.

There is a culture of failure here that I find really liberating.

There's just no utility in being self critical.

Because when people are able to sort of indulge their creativity, it makes all of our lives better.

"La vocación es un llamado, pero un llamado solo se puede escuchar si no hay ruido"

Using art as my champion I feel like I’m bringing a little bit of freedom to people's lives.

Si a mi me preguntan qué es la libertad, yo inmediatamente pienso en el silencio.

What I'm doing right now feels so natural. It feels so good. It's like I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

It's only when you can name your prison that you can do the terrifying but life-affirming and necessary work of setting yourself free.

Allowing yourself to find the things that you love and dedicating your life to doing them.

Freedom gives us power.

Freedom does not depend on anything.

We all look for the same things but try different methods.

Freedom is control.

The creation is everything no matter what we do.

There are no ideal solutions.

Change, it can actually liberate you. It's the only constant companion in life. It's the one thing that will stay with you from start to finish, and if you resist change, I'm afraid it's gonna become your enemy.

The only way to become "successful" is to define what success actually means to you — and it should be different for everyone.

In the Netherlands we tend to forget how important freedom is, because we have it.

When I think of freedom, I think of creatives that make art or software and go to jail for that.

Welcome to creative midnights. A real creative wakes up at 11, right.

The greatest act of freedom is finding the spaces in between, the places and gaps where few others have ventured. Pay attention to what constraints trouble you, and why they do so, and leap into those spaces. Work alongside others and learn to make those blank spaces, common places.

The greatest act of freedom is finding the spaces in between!

Just say no.

На каждом следующем витке ты все лучше делаешь какую-то вещь и все меньше у тебя делается свободы переопределять себя и находить себе новые применения.

The power of being able to come up with new to the world ideas is so intoxicating for people.

The road to riches is paved in unrelenting hard work.

It's really important to have the freedom to make mistakes and have the opportunity and space to do that.

You have to put the work in to maintain that freedom.

Two years ago, I quit my job and decided to put all my eggs in one basket.

The most beautiful things for me is the act of creative expression. So why am I worried about all these aspects of the creative process that aren't beautiful?

I find it really inspiring to just live in a dysfunctional crumbling city full of people who make things.

And selfishly, I feel like when people inhibit there own creative process it makes my life poorer. Because when people are able to indulge their creativity it makes all of our lives better.

I've seen so many projects stillborn, because the creator doubts themselves.

It seems like for many people, that's there biggest inhibitory factor, they criticize themselves almost a priori. Before they start working on their creative project, the critical voice kicks in. And it's so heartbreaking, so unnecessary.

Freedom is being able to define your constraints.

Freedom is the absence of constraints.

Constraints invite inventiveness.

I create with the intent to share.

Asta e o imagine aeriană a Europei în 1985 iar gaura neagră de lângă Marea Neagră e locul unde am fost eu educat.

You could have any life that you want, but you have to decide out what you're in pursuit of.

One nice thing about failure is when you go through it at the end you can sort of take stock and say "OK, that was a failure. And it wasn't that bad."

Self-efficacy is defined as you have a sense of the world, you have a sense of your place in it, and that you believe that you can achieve what you've set out to do. Isn't that lovely? Think about how different that feels from most people's lives.

I decided to not show any slides. Can you imagine that? A designer who's not going to show any slides.

It's very important that you greet strangers with good eye contact. It's very important that you think about putting yourself in the footprint of the stranger that you're making eye contact with.

If you can get that diversity of thinkers and you can get them to work together and build on each other's ideas, you're definitely going to come up with new-to-the-world stuff.

My idea of freedom is experiencing as much as I possibly can so that all the world feels safe to me.

You can’t rely on work to make you happy.

When you stop looking at your job to solve all your problems, you'll stop being disappointed.

Freedom is something that's constantly in negotiation—both with our surrounding world and within ourselves.

Everything is a group therapy session for me.

Innovation requires courage.

Ownership is irrelevant. The way you establish your business now is by being innovative.

If you're breathing, you're a creative person.

By us not talking about sex, then we allow rape culture, having unprotected sex, and not being able to negotiate to become the norm.

The way that you break binaries is by introducing multi-dimensional narratives of who we really are.

All work is dignified work.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever received was to stop waiting for advice.

No matter what your career, your work is still work.

I quit my career to do what I love and it worked out way better than I ever expected.

I made a resolution to brainstorm something that made me happier than anything in the world and to start dong that every day.

Innovation requires courage.

Taking risks is the key to free thought, new ideas, originality.

I didn't assume that anyone would show up because I thought the people who don't have jobs are probably still asleep, and the people who do have jobs are at work.

It is only when you can name your prison that you can do the terrifying, but life affirming and necessary work of setting yourself free.

I went into prison thinking that it was my job to inspire these women, but what it turns out to be is that these women are inspiring me to get out of my prison.

I felt like the whole world had just opened up before me and that everything was locked into place inside me.

I was in this windowless classroom, down a windowless hallway, I had walked through four heavy steel doors that buzzed open and closed, yet I felt liberated.

I had a huge awakening. I was looking at this grown woman in dark blue prison scrubs, these convicted criminals, villains, that I had a bias against, and thought, this is about multiple generations of a family in crisis. This problem is so much bigger than I initially understood.

In preparing this talk, I've come face to face with my prison.

If you appeal to the mind, hearts will follow.

The computer is a bit of a prison.

Creativity is all about a free mind.

Where does creative freedom come from?

I believe the most valuable things in life are people and time you spend with them.

The most valuable part of learning through experience is not actually the experience, it's reflection. It's taking the time to see how you've changed and how you grew.

For us to know freedom, we must know constraints.

In a room full of privilege, what does freedom look like?

Understanding the limitations of who I am helps put me on the path for what I'm made to do and how I'm made to do it.

My criteria for failure is (...) did it involve facial tattoos? Did it involve viruses? Did it involve unwanted children or loss limbs? Unless it involves any of these 4 things, you're probably OK.

Of course, we are told that the killer drones are actually directed against terrorists. Simultaneously, the British government believes that the fact-finding journalists from The Guardian are terrorists.

Everybody in LA fails. We just do.

My friends who are very self-critical edit before they actually do anything. They assume that no matter what they do, it's not going to be good and so they don't even bother doing it.

Es una libertad creativa lo que me ha permitido explorar nuevas ideas, o ideas que estaban escondidas, ideas que tal vez hubieran quedado perdidas en un boceto o una línea mal hecha.

Pay attention to what constraints trouble you, and why they do so, and leap into those spaces.

The greatest act of freedom is finding the spaces in between.

Design meant making impact in the world, not designing a new podium or table.

Limitations breed creativity. Limitations breed freedom.

You can't do everything you put your mind to, but you'll be amazed at who you find yourself to be if you put your mind to letting yourself have the freedom to be your true self.

There's this idea that you can do anything you put your mind to. It's so not true.

Being yourself is one of the hardest things to do for a human being. Until you do it. Then it's the easiest.

We say, 'Just be yourself.' Why do we have to say that? There's only one you in the whole world. You're yourself by default.

I would rather build the Taj Mahal out of toothpicks than read a book.

I used to put plastic boxes around computers. Exclusively. I just couldn't be happy with that for the rest of my life.

We want to paint a picture of the future with our new ideas in it.

Most of my career, I've felt that I was at the kids' table.

I could’ve retired and missed this whole design renaissance thing that’s going on, but I’m glad I didn’t. It’s an exciting time. Creative people are being asked to work on really important problems, problems that matter in the world, and the good news is we’re coming up with new-to-the-world solutions, and so it’s a really good time to be a designer.

We really believe that the designer’s task is trying to understand 'What’s a problem that’s worth working on? What’s a non-obvious need that’s out there in the world?' and then we’ll innovate around that.

Your body always knows what's next.

I want women to have really good orgasms.

Migration is in our DNA. When white folks move, it's seen as a good thing, they're settling new frontiers. When people of color move, it's a criminal act.

When we talk about criminals, you're talkin about my parents, and if it were not for my mother migrating here, I would not be able to be an artist.

If you poll American voters, you know their number one thing? Law and order. Americans just love their law and order.

Before you change politics, you have to change culture.

Today, United States schools are more segregated than they've been in four decades.

How do we envision a world that's gender free, where gender binaries don't exist?

Art became a way for me to reclaim my humanity

In the space of ideas is where we can be visionaries. We don't just need to fight for what we are against, we need to fight for the kind of society we want to build.

Throughout history, cities have been flooded. Cities have been burned to the ground. Cities have been bombed. Cities have had their economic hearts ripped out of them. But cities have had the ability to come back, re-identify themselves, and become something else.

Cities are like people. They are resilient. They can change, and they do change.

Art became a way for me to reclaim my humanity.

Art and culture allows us to see ourselves as multi-dimensional people.

When we really push the narratives, and we come out with our stories we can change policies.

The power of art is that it can ultimately transform what you see.

When we are fighting for change we are always in the 'NO'. We are saying NO to jails, NO don't cut this, NO don't deport my family. But what are we saying YES to?

In the space of "ideas" is where we can radically change systems. And that is, how do we completely re-envision our society?

For too long, we've lived in a patriarchal society that polices the way that women should be or act.