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Painters, writers and poets probably consider themselves creative. We all seem to agree with this popular idea of a creative person. Many manmade things are extraordinarily beautiful: the great cathedrals, temples and mosques – and we know nothing of the people who built them. But now, with us, anonymity has almost gone. With anonymity there is a different kind of creativity, not based on success or money. Anonymity has great importance; in it there is a different quality – personal motives, attitudes and opinions do not exist and there is a feeling of freedom, from which there is action. But most manmade creativity, as we call it, takes place from the known. Great musicians – Beethoven, Bach and others – acted from the known; writers and philosophers have read and accumulated. Although they developed their own style, they were always moving, acting or writing from that which they had accumulated: the known. And this we generally call creativity. Is that really creative, or is there a different kind of creativity born out of freedom from the known? Krishnamurti, Questions and Answers