Edward De Bono quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Edward De Bono

Edward De Bono Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Edward De Bono on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

Mock the devil, and he will flee from thee.

The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results.

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.

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

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

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

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

Don't criticise a hypothesis, come up with a better one.

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

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

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.

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

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

You hold onto religion, you know, rules, regulations, traditions. I think what God is interested in is people's hearts, and that's hard enough.

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

There may be more danger in prejudices which are apparently founded in logic than in those which are acknowledged as emotions. (p69)

The image that concerns most people is the reflection they see in other people's minds.

Man owes his success to his creativity. No one doubts the need for it. It is most useful in good times and essential in bad.

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

You can analyse the past, but you have to design the future

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

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

The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to defend but not quite enough to innovate.

Do we have the will to make poverty history?

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

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

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

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

You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper

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

Logic will never change emotion or perception.

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

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

Effectiveness without values is a tool without a purpose.

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

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

Creativity and lateral thinking have exactly the same basis as humour.

In 80% of Socrates' dialogues there was no constructive outcome. He saw his role as simply pointing out what was wrong.

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

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

A good design is not a democratic consensus.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Companies that solely focus on competition will ultimately die. Those that focus on value creation will thrive.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

If you do not design the future, someone or something else will design it for you.

Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.

Simplicity before understanding is simplistic; simplicity after understanding is simple.

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

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.

People should realize we're jerks just like them.

Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea.

You cannot look in a new direction by looking harder in the same direction.

Asking a question is the simplest way of focusing thinking ... asking the right question may be the most important part of thinking.

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

Possibilities play a much bigger role in thinking than most people believe. Without possibilities you cannot make progress.

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

The awful thing is that you can never be aware of what you are not aware of.

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

A question is a polite way of demanding something.

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

It's not enough to rage against the lie.. you've got to replace it with the truth.

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

I'm a very loyal and unreliable friend.

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.

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

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

The effective thinker treats arrogance as the major sin of thinking.

If you never change your mind, why have one?

Perception is real even when it is not reality.

A problem is simply the difference between what one has and what one wants.

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

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

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

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.

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

A characteristic of intuitive solutions and new ideas is that of being obvious once they are discovered.

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

If you understand the system you can design appropriate action.

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

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

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