Top 152 Quotes & Sayings by Edward de Bono

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

People should realize we're jerks just like them.

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.

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.

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

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

If you never change your mind, why have one?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Logic will never change emotion or perception.

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.

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

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.

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

Effectiveness without values is a tool without a purpose.

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.

Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.

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.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(...) 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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