Top 100 Ed Catmull Quotes
#1. Creativity involves missteps and imperfections. I wanted our people to get comfortable with that idea - that both the organization and its members should be willing, at times, to operate on the edge.
Ed Catmull
#3. Uncertainty and change are life's constraints. And that's the fun part.
Ed Catmull
#4. You don't have to ask permission to take responsibility.
Ed Catmull
#5. The goal, then, is to uncouple fear and failure - to create an environment in which making mistakes doesn't strike terror into your employees' hearts.
Ed Catmull
#6. I'm not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth.
Ed Catmull
#8. He saw firsthand the way that the Disney people took advantage of the open floor plan, sharing information and brainstorming. Steve was a big believer in the power of accidental mingling; he knew that creativity was not a solitary endeavor.
Ed Catmull
#9. When faced with a challenge, get smarter.
Ed Catmull
#10. I feel like the only reason we're able to find some of these unique ideas, characters, and story twists is through discovery. And, by definition, 'discovery' means you don't know the answer when you start.
Ed Catmull
#11. Countless times, I remember watching him toss ideas - pretty far-out ideas - into the air, just to see how they played. And if they didn't play well, he would move on.
Ed Catmull
#12. Many managers feel that if they are not notified about problems before others are or if they are surprised in a meeting, then that is a sign of disrespect. Get over it.
Ed Catmull
#13. but its most important characteristic was an ability to analyze the emotional beats of a movie without any of its members themselves getting emotional or defensive.
Ed Catmull
#14. The good stuff was hiding the bad stuff. I realised that this was something I needed to look out for: When downsides coexist with upsides, as they often do, people are reluctant to explore what's bugging them, for the fear of being labeled complainers.
Ed Catmull
#15. An adage worth repeating is also halfway to being irrelevant. You end up with something that is easy to say but not connected to behavior.
Ed Catmull
#16. Creative people must accept that challenges never cease, failure can't be avoided, and "vision" is often an illusion.
Ed Catmull
#17. Don't wait for things to be perfect before you share them with others. Show early and show often. It'll be pretty when we get there, but it won't be pretty along the way.
Ed Catmull
#18. we didn't know what was impossible. Neither, apparently, did he: He was among the first to believe that Hollywood movie execs would care a fig about what was happening in academia.
Ed Catmull
#19. We had done the impossible. We had done the thing that everyone told us we couldn't do. And we had done it spectacularly well.
Ed Catmull
#20. We tend to think of emotion and logic as two distinct, mutually exclusive domains. Not Steve. From the beginning, when making decisions, passion was a key part of his calculus.
Ed Catmull
#21. Always try to hire people who are smarter than you. Always take a chance on better, even if it seems like a potential threat.
Ed Catmull
#22. We humans like to know where we are headed, but creativity demands that we travel paths that lead to who-knows-where.
Ed Catmull
#23. Getting the right people and the right chemistry is more important than getting the right idea.
Ed Catmull
#24. Don't confuse the process with the goal. Working on our processes to make them better, easier, and more efficient is an indispensable activity and something we should continually work on - but it is not the goal. Making the product great is the goal.
Ed Catmull
#25. Rather than trying to prevent all errors, we should assume, as is almost always the case, that our people's intentions are good and that they want to solve problems. Give them responsibility, let the mistakes happen, and let people fix them.
Ed Catmull
#26. As I've said, ARPA had been created in response to Sputnik, and one of its key organizing principles was that collaboration could lead to excellence.
Ed Catmull
#27. Things change, constantly, as they should. And with change comes the need for adaptation, for fresh thinking, and, sometimes, for even a total reboot - of your project, your department, your division, or your company as a whole.
Ed Catmull
#28. there is a sweet spot between the known and the unknown where originality happens; the key is to be able to linger there without panicking. And
Ed Catmull
#29. (This is why it is so frustrating that funding for arts programs in schools has been decimated. And those cuts stem from a fundamental misconception that art classes are about learning to draw. In fact, they are about learning to see.) Whether
Ed Catmull
#30. You might say I'm an advocate for humility in leaders. But to be truly humble, those leaders must first understand how many of the factors that shape their lives and businesses are - and will always be - out of sight.
Ed Catmull
#31. Engaging with exceptionally hard problems forces us to think differently.
Ed Catmull
#32. That's the place you're looking for: when the movie starts to tell you what it wants to be.
Ed Catmull
#34. communicating fully and openly, by not withholding or misleading. There is no doubt that our decision-making is better if we are able to draw on the collective knowledge and unvarnished opinions of the group. But as valuable as the information is
Ed Catmull
#35. Hindsight is not 20-20. Not even close. Our view of the past, in fact, is hardly clearer than our view of the future.
Ed Catmull
#36. Instead, they asked: How do we prevent our people from screwing up? That approach never encourages a creative response.
Ed Catmull
#37. To my mind, randomness is not just inevitable; it is part of the beauty of life. Acknowledging it and appreciating it helps us respond constructively when we are surprised.
Ed Catmull
#38. Fear can be created quickly; trust can't.
Ed Catmull
#39. We are striving to tell you something impactful and true. When attempting to make good on that promise, no detail is too small.
Ed Catmull
#40. I believe that no creative company should ever stop evolving, and this would be our latest attempt to avoid stagnation.
Ed Catmull
#41. Fear of change - innate, stubborn, and resistant to reason - is a powerful force.
Ed Catmull
#42. When downsides coexist with upsides, as they often do, people are reluctant to explore what's bugging them, for fear of being labeled complainers.
Ed Catmull
#43. the human tendency to treat big events as fundamentally different from smaller ones.
Ed Catmull
#44. It'll be a day in which you tell us how to make Pixar better," John said. "We'll do no work that day. No visitors will be allowed. Everyone must attend.
Ed Catmull
#45. Our mental models aren't reality. They are tools, like the models weather forecasters use to predict the weather. But, as we know all too well, sometimes the forecast says rain and, boom, the sun comes out. The tool is not reality. The key is knowing the difference.
Ed Catmull
#46. It's extremely difficult to create something out of nothing, especially when you consider that much of what you're trying to realize is hidden, at least at first.
Ed Catmull
#47. We realized that our purpose was not merely to build a studio that made hit films but to foster a creative culture that would continually ask questions.
Ed Catmull
#48. In big organizations there are advantages to consistency, but I strongly believe that smaller groups within the larger whole should be allowed to differentiate themselves and operate according to their own rules, so long as those rules work.
Ed Catmull
#49. In general, I have found that people who pour their energy into thinking about an approach and insisting that it is too early to act are wrong just as often as people who dive in and work quickly. The overplanners just take longer to be wrong
Ed Catmull
#50. Sometimes you talk about the problems in fifty different ways until you find that one sentence that you can see makes their eyes pop, as if they're thinking, 'Oh, I want to do it.
Ed Catmull
#51. If one looks at creativity as a resource that we continually draw upon to make something from nothing, then our fear stems from the need to make the nonexistent come into being.
Ed Catmull
#52. The antidote to fear is trust, and we all have a desire to find something to trust in an uncertain world. Fear and trust are powerful forces, and while they are not opposites, exactly, trust is the best tool for driving out fear.
Ed Catmull
#53. Craft is what we are expected to know; art is the unexpected use of our craft.
Ed Catmull
#54. I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear.
Ed Catmull
#55. The roller coaster came to a stop and a good friend got off, but what a ride we'd taken together. It had been one hell of a trip.
Ed Catmull
#56. good leadership can help creative people stay on the path to excellence no matter what business they're in.
Ed Catmull
#57. studios down. (He also thought, frankly, that making us the stewards of both entities would guarantee that Pixar's traditions didn't get overtaken by those of the much larger corporation, the Walt Disney Company.)
Ed Catmull
#58. The uncreated is a vast, empty space. This emptiness is so scary that most hold on to what they know, making minor adjustments to what they understand, unable to move on to something unknown.
Ed Catmull
#59. fail early and fail fast" and "be wrong as fast as you can.
Ed Catmull
#60. As more people are added to any group, there is an inexorable drift toward inflexibility.
Ed Catmull
#61. constructive criticism is "good notes." A good note says what is wrong, what is missing, what isn't clear, what makes no sense.
Ed Catmull
#62. That's because success convinces us that we are doing things the right way. There is nothing quite as effective, when it comes to shutting down alternative viewpoints, as being convinced you are right.
Ed Catmull
#63. You'll never stumble upon the unexpected if you stick only to the familiar.
Ed Catmull
#64. Not the confidence that we know exactly what to do at all times but the confidence that, together, we will figure it out.
Ed Catmull
#65. one of my core management beliefs: If you don't try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead.
Ed Catmull
#66. Negative feedback may be fun, but it is far less brave than endorsing something unproven and providing room to grow.
Ed Catmull
#67. From a very early age, the message is drilled into our heads: Failure is bad; failure means you didn't study or prepare; failure means you slacked off or - worse! - aren't smart enough to begin with. Thus, failure is something to be ashamed of.
Ed Catmull
#68. Katherine Sarafian, a producer who's been at Pixar since Toy Story, tells me she prefers to envision triggering the process over trusting it - observing it to see where it's faltering, then slapping it around a bit to make sure it's awake.
Ed Catmull
#69. What is the point of hiring smart people, we asked, if you don't empower them to fix what's broken?
Ed Catmull
#70. ARPA's mandate - to support smart people in a variety of areas - was carried out based on the unwavering presumption that researchers would try to do the right thing and, in ARPA's view, overmanaging them was counterproductive.
Ed Catmull
#71. Keep on going, even when things look bleak.
Ed Catmull
#72. If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.
Ed Catmull
#73. Failure was being used as a weapon, rather than as an agent of learning.
Ed Catmull
#74. Always take a chance on better, even if it seems threatening.
Ed Catmull
#75. Fear makes people reach for certainty and stability, neither of which guarantee the safety they imply.
Ed Catmull
#76. Clearly, it wasn't enough for managers to have good ideas - they had to be able to engender support for those ideas among the people who'd be charged with employing them.
Ed Catmull
#77. Making the process better, easier, and cheaper is an important aspiration, something we continually work on - but it is not the goal. Making something great is the goal.
Ed Catmull
#79. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.
Ed Catmull
#80. the future is unmade, and we must create it.
Ed Catmull
#81. Where, along the way, do we turn from the wide-eyed child into the adult who fears surprises and has all the answers and seeks to control all outcomes?
Ed Catmull
#82. I remember his assertiveness. There was no small talk. Instead, there were questions. Lots of questions. What do you want? Steve asked. Where are you heading? What are your long-term goals?
Ed Catmull
#83. Our job as managers in creative environments is to protect new ideas from those who don't understand that in order for greatness to emerge, there must be phases of not-so-greatness. Protect the future, not the past.
Ed Catmull
#84. When we put setbacks into two buckets - the "business as usual" bucket and the "holy cow" bucket - and use a different mindset for each, we are signing up for trouble.
Ed Catmull
#85. If we start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive, we become more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse.
Ed Catmull
#86. While the allure of safety and predictability is strong, achieving true balance means engaging in activities whose outcomes and payoffs are not yet apparent. The
Ed Catmull
#87. A better measure of our success is to look at the people on our team and see how they are working together. Can they rally to solve key problems? If the answer is yes, you are managing well.
Ed Catmull
#88. Do not fall for the illusion that by preventing errors, you won't have errors to fix. The truth is, the cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them.
Ed Catmull
#89. First, it created an electronic suggestion box where Pixar people could submit discussion topics they thought would help us become more innovative and more efficient. Immediately, topic ideas began flooding in, along with suggestions about how to run Notes Day itself.
Ed Catmull
#90. To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth. Left
Ed Catmull
#91. At the U of U, we were inventing a new language. One of us would contribute a verb, another a noun, then a third person would figure out ways to string the elements together to actually say something.
Ed Catmull
#92. Despite good intentions, the result is troubling: Feeding the Beast becomes the central focus.
Ed Catmull
#93. You suffer through it as you struggle to solve it, but by the end you've developed a sort of fondness for it, and you miss it when it is gone.
Ed Catmull
#94. It's difficult sometimes to tell the difference between what is impossible and what is possible (but requires a big reach). At a creative company, mistaking one for the other can be fatal - but getting it right always elevates.
Ed Catmull
#95. A characteristic of creative people is that they imagine making the impossible possible. That imagining - dreaming, noodling, audaciously rejecting what is (for the moment) true - is the way we discover what is new or important.
Ed Catmull
#96. Andrew Stanton spoke next. Andrew is fond of saying that people need to be wrong as fast as they can.
Ed Catmull
#97. failure is a manifestation of learning and exploration.
Ed Catmull
#98. Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, and appreciate that you cannot measure the vast majority of what you do. And at least every once in a while, make time to take a step back and think about what you are doing.
Ed Catmull
#99. Paying attention to the present moment without letting your thoughts and ideas about the past and the future get in the way is essential.
Ed Catmull
#100. When it comes to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless.
Ed Catmull
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
