Edward de Bono
Traditional thinking is all about "what is" Future thinking will also need to be about what can be.Collection: Business
The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.Collection: Car
It's not enough to rage against the lie.. you've got to replace it with the truth.Collection: Truth
The effective thinker treats arrogance as the major sin of thinking.Collection: Thinking
Every valuable creative idea must always be logical in hindsight. If it were not, we would never be able to see its value.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: Creativity
Mock the devil, and he will flee from thee.Collection: Bible
America is not just a country, it's an idea.Collection: Country
Once a new idea springs into existence, it cannot be unthought. There is a sense of immortality in a new idea.Collection: Spring
As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems.Collection: Creativity
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.Collection: Dream
Thinking is the ultimate human resource. Yet we can never be satisfied with our most important skill. No matter how good we become, we should always want to be betterCollection: Thinking
You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeperCollection: Different
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.Collection: Creativity
We need both information and thinking. Information is no substitute for thinking and thinking is no substitute for information.Collection: Thinking
Possibilities play a much bigger role in thinking than most people believe. Without possibilities you cannot make progress.Collection: Believe
What is urgent will always take precedence over what is important.Collection: Important
Only the human brain can deliberately change perceptions, change patterns, invent concepts and tolerate ambiguity.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Communication
You can't dig a different hole by digging the same one deeper.Collection: Mentor
The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to defend but not quite enough to innovate.Collection: Real
Effectiveness without values is a tool without a purpose.Collection: Effectiveness
You can analyse the past, but you have to design the futureCollection: Past
(...) being right all the time acquires a huge importance in education, and there is this terror of being wrong. The ego is so tied to being right that later on in life you are reluctant to accept that you are ever wrong, because you are defending not the idea but your self-esteem. (...) this terror of being wrong means that people have enormous difficulties in changing ideas.Collection: Real
The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results.Collection: Inspirational
We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving.Collection: Mean
If you do not design the future, someone or something else will design it for you.Collection: Future
We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place.Collection: Business
Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.Collection: Fun
Creativity can be learned like basketball, which does not mean we will all be NBA stars.Collection: Basketball
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'.Collection: Change
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.Collection: Encouragement
I'm a very loyal and unreliable friend.Collection: Cute Relationship
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.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Simple
Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone.Collection: Creativity
I know it aches, how your heart it breaks. You can only take so much. Walk on.Collection: Healing
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Ideas
With vertical thinking one may look for different approaches until one finds a promising one. With lateral thinking one goes on generating as many approaches as one can even after one has found a promising one. With vertical thinking one is trying to select the best approach but with lateral thinking one is generating different approaches for the sake of generating them.Collection: Thinking
Maybe the social value of truth is as a destination - so long as we do not assume we have arrived there.Collection: Honesty
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.Collection: Country
Our existing thinking habits are excellent, just as the rear wheels of a motor car are excellent, but not enough.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Jesus
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?Collection: Simple
This is not about charity, it's about justice... The war against terror is bound up in the war against poverty - I didn't say that, Colin Powell said that . . . In these disturbing and distressing times, surely it's cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than it is to defend yourself against them..Justice is the surest way to get peace.Collection: War
We do not make very full value of the opportunities provided by technology because we prefer critical to constructive thinking, argument to design.Collection: Technology
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.Collection: God
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.Collection: Motivation