Edward de Bono Quotes

Unfortunately, our existing traditional thinking habits insist that you must attack something and show it to be bad before you can suggest a change. It is more difficult to acknowledge that something is excellent and then to ask for change because although it is excellent, it is not enough.

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.

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.

We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place.

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

You can analyse the past, but you need to design the future. That is the difference between suffering the future and enjoying it.

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.

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.

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

A discussion should be a genuine attempt to explore a subject rather than a battle between competing egos.

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

Language is the biggest barrier to human progress because language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Old perceptions are frozen into language and force us to look at the world in an old fashioned way.

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.

You can't dig a different hole by digging the same one deeper.

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.

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

Complexity creates confusion, simplicity focus.

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

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.

Traditional thinking is all about "what is" Future thinking will also need to be about what can be.

I know it aches, how your heart it breaks. You can only take so much. Walk on.

I used to think that one day I'd be able to resolve the different drives I have in different directions, the tensions between the different people I am. Now I realize that is who I am. I do feel I'm getting closer to the song in my head. I wasn't looking for grace. But luckily grace was looking for me.

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

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

We need both information and thinking. Information is no substitute for thinking and thinking is no substitute for information.

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.

Intelligence is something we are born with. Thinking is a skill that must be learned.

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

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

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

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

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

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

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.

To develop thinking as a skill, it should be deliberate, focused, confident, and enjoyable.

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

People should realize we're jerks just like them.

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

Explaining belief has alwayas been difficult. How do you explain a love and a logic at the heart of the universe when the world is so out of whack? Explaining faith is impossible - vision over visibility - instinct over intellect - a songwriter plays a chore with the faith that he will hear the next one in his head.

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

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

On trade, our hypocrisy is at its most appalling. Trade reform isn't about charity, it's about justice, and this campaign, Trade Justice is an unstoppable idea.

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.

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

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

Our existing thinking habits are excellent, just as the rear wheels of a motor car are excellent, but not enough.

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.

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.