Edward de Bono famous quotes

Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
-- Edward de Bono

#Wisdom #Creativity #Humor

If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd.
-- Edward de Bono

#Inspirational #Opportunity #Waiting

Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.
-- Edward de Bono

#Learning #Knowledge #Management

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

#Thinking #Perception #Important

If you never change your mind, why have one?
-- Edward de Bono

#Motivational #Depression #Mind

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

#Business #Ingredients #Chef

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

#Knowing #Decision #Judgement

The awful thing is that you can never be aware of what you are not aware of.
-- Edward de Bono

#Awful #Awareness

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

#Car #Perfect #Firsts

Traditional thinking is all about "what is" Future thinking will also need to be about what can be.
-- Edward de Bono

#Thinking #Needs

You can't dig a different hole by digging the same one deeper.
-- Edward de Bono

#Mentor #Different #Digging

Some people drift along like a cork on a river, feeling that they cannot do anything except drift, moment to moment. This is an attitude of mind. Everyone can be constructive even in tiny ways.
-- Edward de Bono

#Attitude #Rivers #People

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

#Creativity #Order #Imagination

Intelligence is something we are born with. Thinking is a skill that must be learned.
-- Edward de Bono

#Thinking #Skills #Born

Companies that solely focus on competition will ultimately die. Those that focus on value creation will thrive.
-- Edward de Bono

#Softball #Focus #Competition

Everyone has the right to doubt everything as often as he pleases and the duty to do it at least once. No way of looking at things is too sacred to be reconsidered. No way of doing things is beyond improvement.
-- Edward de Bono

#Real #Doubt #Sacred

A good design is not a democratic consensus.
-- Edward de Bono

#Business #Design #Democratic

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

#Powerful #Taken #Creativity

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

#Creativity #Order #Patterns

Creative thinking is not a talent, it is a skill that can be learned. It empowers people by adding strength to their natural abilities which improves teamwork, productivity and, where appropriate, profits.
-- Edward de Bono

#Teamwork #Creativity #Thinking

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Creativity #Thinking #Creative

Opportunity ideas do not lie around waiting to be discovered. Such ideas need to be produced.
-- Edward de Bono

#Lying #Opportunity #Ideas

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Education #Teaching #Math

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Education #Today #Debate

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
-- Edward de Bono

#Memories #Doe

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Optimistic #Thinking #Errors

The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas.
-- Edward de Bono

#Ideas #Needs #Bars

Logic will never change emotion or perception.
-- Edward de Bono

#Perception #Emotion #Logic

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Cost #Strive #Be Prepared

Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.
-- Edward de Bono

#Mistake #Thinking #Perception

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Thinking #Self #People

Complexity creates confusion, simplicity focus.
-- Edward de Bono

#Confusion #Focus #Simplicity

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

#Buddhist #Creativity #Ideas

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 better
-- Edward de Bono

#Thinking #Skills #Important

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Marriage #Intelligent #Thinking

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Hope #Fun #Creativity

You cannot look in a new direction by looking harder in the same direction.
-- Edward de Bono

#Looks #Harder

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Simple #Energy #Attention

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Believe #School #Data

Creativity is a great motivator because it mades people interested in what they are doing.
-- Edward de Bono

#Creativity #People #Made

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Motivational #Powerful #Taken

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Thinking #Enough #Habit

You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper
-- Edward de Bono

#Digging #Different #Holes

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

#Reflection #People #Mind

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

#Thinking #Important #Asking

There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.
-- Edward de Bono

#Creativity #Forever #Innovation

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

#Real #People #Enough

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.
-- Edward de Bono

#Business #Creativity #Bad Ass