Quotes by Edward de Bono

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“I must say, I dont feel very qualified to be a pop star. I feel very awkward at times in the role.”

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

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

“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.”

When the positive revolution takes hold it will no longer be enough for politicians to gain points through attack or being negative. Politicians will be expected to be constructive.

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

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.

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 provocation, exploration and risk taking. Creativity involves thought experiments. You cannot tell in advance how the experiment is going to turn out. But you want to be able to carry out the experiment.

Critical thinking does seem a superior sort of thinking because it seems as though the critic is actually going beyond the scope of what is being criticized in order to criticize it. That is only rarely a true assumption because, most often, the critic will seize on some little aspect that he or she understands and tackle only that.

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

It is not the logical part of thinking that changes emotions but the perceptual part. If we see something differently, our emotions may alter with the altered perception. (p64)

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

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

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