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So every creative act strives to attain an absolute status; it longs to create a world of beauty to triumph over chaos and convert it to order.
Rowan Williams
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Creative acts aim to bring beauty and order to a chaotic world.

In this quote, Rowan Williams expresses the inherent desire within every act of creativity to rise above disorder and chaos. Creativity seeks to establish a sense of beauty and harmony, reflecting a profound human aspiration to impose order on the complexities of existence.

Themes

CreativityBeautyOrderChaosArt

In practice

Example use cases

During a speech at an art gallery opening, to emphasize the importance of creativity in society.

More from Rowan Williams

It is impossible to deny that Christians and Muslims have a common agenda here: both faiths have at their heart the living image of a community raised up by God's call to reveal to the world what God's purpose is for humanity.
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As the gospels present it to us, the mission of Jesus of Nazareth is about the way in which the community of God's people - historically, the Jewish people who had first received the law and the covenant - is being re-created in relation to Jesus himself.
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Keeping our eyes on journey's end is what we need - the place where we see at last the world that is greater than the world, the new creation that cannot be contained in present thought or social order or piety.
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Our present ecological crisis, the biggest single practical threat to our human existence in the middle to long term, has, religious people would say, a great deal to do with our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.
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Incidentally, one of the most worrying problems in the impact of Western modernity on traditional culture is that it quite rapidly communicates its own indifference or anxiety or even hostility about age and ageing.
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Institutions develop because people put a lot of trust in them, they meet real needs, they represent important aspirations, whether it's monasteries, media, or banks, people begin by trusting these institutions, and gradually the suspicion develops that actually they're working for themselves, not for the community.
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Art is about trying to find the good in people, and making the world a more compassionate place.
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In a way, writing is an incredible act of individualism, producing your language, and yet to use it from the heart of a crowd as opposed to as an individual performance is a conflicting thing. I do stand alone, and yet it's not about being an individual or being ambitious.
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I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.
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