Edward de Bono Quotations

If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd.

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.

There's a danger in the internet and social media. The notion that information is enough, that more and more information is enough, that you don't have to think, you just have to get more information - gets very dangerous.

Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.

In the future, instead of striving to be right at a high cost, it will be more appropriate to be flexible and plural at a lower cost. If you cannot accurately predict the future then you must flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.

One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.

To be successful you have to be lucky, or a little mad, or very talented, or find yourself in a rapid growth field.

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.

Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.

Teaching thinking for just five hours to unemployed youngsters increased employment 500 percent.

We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.

Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas.

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

I do a great deal of work with young children, and if you give a child a problem, he may come up with a highly original solution, because he doesn't have the established route to it.

An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.

I think there is a danger with young people of being dependent in the sense that they don't acquire any identity or self-image of themselves as thinkers.

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

Creative thinking - in terms of idea creativity - is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practised and nurtured.

Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain way. Looked at in another way, the right course of action may be so obvious that the problem no longer exists.

It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.

Humor is probably the most significant characteristics of the human mind. Far more significant than reason. In fact, reason is actually a very cheap commodity.

Humour is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.

Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.

The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas.

If you never change your mind, why have one?

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.

Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.

Opportunity ideas do not lie around waiting to be discovered. Such ideas need to be produced.

I think school is a place where thinking should be taught.

Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.

People should realize we're jerks just like them.

In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better.

What the joke displays is a switch in perception. This is important in changing the way we think.

My thinking was taught to tribes in South Africa like the Zulus and Xhosas. At the time there were about 210 fights breaking out among them every month, but after they listened to my lessons, this fell to just four.

It's always amazed me how little attention philosophers, psychologists, or anyone else actually has paid to humor.

The purpose of science is not to analyze or describe but to make useful models of the world. A model is useful if it allows us to get use out of it.

I must say, I don't feel very qualified to be a pop star. I feel very awkward at times in the role.

The simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.

The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

Western traditions of education have emphasized knowledge analysis, description and debate. They all have a part to play, but today there is a whole vast aspect of doing that has just been left out. Operacy is what keeps society going.

Child mortality [since 2000 is] down by 2.65 million a year. That's a rate of 7,256 children's lives saved each day. ... It drives me nuts that most people don't seem to know this news.

I'm in love with this country called "America." I'm a huge fan of America. I'm one of those annoying fans - you know, the ones that read the cd notes and follow you into bathrooms and ask you all kinds of annoying questions about why you didn't live up to that. I'm that kind of fan. I've read the Declaration of Independence, and I've read the Constitution of the United States, and they are some liner notes, dude.

The Church has its problems, but the older I get, the more comfort I find there.

America is not just a country, it's an idea.

It is historical continuity that maintains most assumptions, not repeated assessment of their validity.

When the story of these times gets written, we want it to say that we did all we could, and it was more than anyone could have imagined.

Once a new idea springs into existence, it cannot be unthought. There is a sense of immortality in a new idea.

Effectiveness without values is a tool without a purpose.

We still seek to solve conflicts with 'judgement' instead of designing the way forwards.

Complacency with our traditional judgement based thinking methods is not enough. Our existing thinking habits are excellent just as the rear wheel of a motor car is excellent but not enough. We need to put far more emphasis on creative and design thinking. Judgement and analysis are not enough.

Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea.

Lateral thinking is concerned not with playing with the existing pieces but with seeking to change those very pieces. It is concerned with the perception part of thinking. This is where we organise the external world into the pieces we can then 'process'.

A good listener is very nearly as attractive as a good talker. You cannot have a beautiful mind if you do not know how to listen.

Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.

Maybe the social value of truth is as a destination - so long as we do not assume we have arrived there.

The quality of our thinking will determine the quality of our future

One can think of a secretary actively operating a filing system, of a librarian actively cataloguing books, of a computer actively sorting out information. The mind however does not actively sort out information. The information sorts itself out and organises itself into patterns. The mind is passive. The mind only provides an opportunity for the information to behave in this way. The mind provides a special environment in which information can become self-organising. This special environment is a memory surface with special characteristics.

What is urgent will always take precedence over what is important.

The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.

In the art world, creativity involves aesthetic sensibility, emotional resonance and a gift for expression.

Creativity can be learned like basketball, which does not mean we will all be NBA stars.

They enjoy thinking. They enjoy being creative. They enjoy having ideas. Most people do not enjoy thinking at all.

Critical thinking does seem a superior sort of thinking because it seems as though the critic is actually going beyond the scope of what is being criticized in order to criticize it. That is only rarely a true assumption because, most often, the critic will seize on some little aspect that he or she understands and tackle only that.

It is well known that "problem avoidance" is an important part of problem solving. Instead of solving the problem you go upstream and alter the system so that the problem does not occur in the first place.

There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all...

Perception is real even when it is not reality.

Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.

A myth is a fixed way of looking at the world which cannot be destroyed because, looked at through the myth, all evidence supports the myth.

The weapons of the positive revolution are not bullets and bombs but simple human perceptions. Bullets and bombs may offer physical power but eventually will only work if they change perceptions and values. Why not go the direct route and work with perceptions and values?

A question is a polite way of demanding something.

Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain subjective, negative, ungrateful way.

Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone.

The analysis of data will not by itself produce new ideas...

To deal with future we have to deal with possibilities. Analysis will only tell us what is.

The solid wealth of insurance companies and the success of those who organsie gambling are some indication of the profits to be derived from the efficient use of chance.

Being right is not too difficult. Your choose your perception. You select your information. You leave out what does not suit you. You drag in some general-purpose value words. You throw in a sneer or two about the opposition, and you are a fine fellow who made a fine speech.

Only the human brain can deliberately change perceptions, change patterns, invent concepts and tolerate ambiguity.

Some people are aware of another sort of thinking which... leads to those simple ideas that are obvious only after they have been thought of... the term 'lateral thinking' has been coined to describe this orther sort of thinking; 'vertical thinking' is used to denote the conventional logical process.

Lateral thinking... is the process of using information to bring about creativity and insight restructuring. Lateral thinking can be learned, practised and used. It is possible to acquire skill in it just as it is possible to acquire skill in mathematics.

I'm a very loyal and unreliable friend.

The vertical thinker says: 'I know what I am looking for.' The lateral thinker says: 'I am looking but I won't know what I am looking for until I have found it.'

Analysis is simplifying, breaking down things into parts, picking out strands and elements. Analysis is comparing unknown things with things that are known. Analysis also involves picking out relationships and putting them back together as a whole.

Do we have the will to make poverty history?

Every valuable creative idea must always be logical in hindsight. If it were not, we would never be able to see its value.

It wouldn't cost too much to change the rules of trade so that poor countries can work their way out of poverty. But the world's leaders won't act unless they hear enough people telling them. And every day they fail to act, thousands of people die because they can't afford the basics of survival.

Everywhere I go, I see very much the same thing. I see the same compassion for people who live half a world away. I see the same concern about events beyond these borders. And, increasingly, I see the same conviction that we can and we must join together to stop the scourge of AIDS and poverty.

The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt.

To me, a faith in Jesus Christ that is not aligned with the poor ... it's nothing.

Although feelings are not supposed to intrude on business discussions, they do anyway - we just disguise them as logic.

I'm tired of dreaming. I'm into doing at the moment. It's, like, let's only have goals that we can go after.

A person who knows all the answers, has an opinion on everything, has a certainty backed up by rational argument, has very little possibility of further progress. Such a person is unlikely to walk away from a discussion with anything more than a reaffirmation of how right he or she has been all along.

We do not make very full value of the opportunities provided by technology because we prefer critical to constructive thinking, argument to design.

The purpose of art is to reflect new emerging values and to define the new heroes and heroines so that people can absorb them into their perceptions.

America is an idea, but it's an idea that brings with it some baggage, like power brings responsibility. It's an idea that brings with it equality, but equality even though it's the highest calling, is the hardest to reach. The idea that anything is possible, that's one of the reasons why I'm a fan of America. It's like hey, look there's the moon up there, let's take a walk on it, bring back a piece of it. That's the kind of America that I'm a fan of.

Mock the devil, and he will flee from thee.

I could never be a politician because I think I'm too selfish, and I think I like to have fun.. the right to be irresponsible is a right I hold dear.

Most people...are put off science because maths is the gateway and they can't handle it. What we should be teaching is operational maths because, in general, the maths we need to carry out science is pretty straightforward.