Creativity Quote by Ivor Novello

Novello is pitching a truth the entertainment industry still runs on: people don’t just consume art, they consume atmosphere. “The average person is gregarious” reads like a mildly patrician shrug, but it’s also a practical diagnosis from a composer who lived off live audiences. He’s not romanticizing community; he’s identifying a built-in human bias that makes a decent show feel great when it’s shared.

The phrasing does sly work. “There is something in the spirit of the crowd” stays conveniently vague, as if the crowd has a soul you can’t measure but can definitely monetize. That “something” is permission: permission to laugh harder, to clap longer, to feel more. In a group, emotion becomes contagious and therefore safer. You don’t have to be the first to be moved; you can join the wave and call it taste.

The subtext is less kumbaya than logistics. Crowds lubricate entertainment by turning attention into a collective ritual. A joke lands because others laugh; a ballad swells because silence becomes shared. Even disappointment gets softened when it’s communal; the night still “happened.”

Context matters: Novello’s world was theatre, operetta, and star-centered spectacle in the early 20th century, when radio and cinema were rearranging leisure but not replacing the social prestige of a night out. He’s defending liveness and the room itself as part of the artwork. Read now, it’s also a quiet warning: entertainment doesn’t only compete on content, it competes on congregations.