Edward de Bono Quotes

45 Sourced Quotes

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

Edward de Bono
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.

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

Edward de Bono
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.

Edward de Bono
What happened was, 2,400 years ago, the Greek Gang of Three, by whom I mean Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, started to think based on analysis, judgment and knowledge. At the same time, church people, who ran the schools and universities, wanted logic to prove the heretics wrong. As a result, design and perceptual thinking was never developed. People assumed philosophers were doing it and so they blocked anyone else from doing it. But philosophers were not. Philosophers may look out at the world from a stained-glass window, but after a while they stop looking at the world and start looking at the stained glass.

Edward de Bono
Design is really a special case of problem solving. One wants to bring about a desired state of affairs. Occasionally one wants to remedy some fault but more usually one wants to bring about something new. For that reason design is more open ended than problem solving. It requires more creativity. It is not so much a matter of linking up a clearly defined objective with a clearly defined starting position (as in problem solving) but more a matter of starting out from a general position in the direction of a general objective

Edward de Bono
There isn't just one point; it takes time to learn. You don't have to be intelligent, but I think you have to be open to possibilities and willing to explore. The only stupid people are those who are arrogant and closed off.

Edward de Bono
The solid wealth of insurance companies and the success of those who organsie gambling are some indication of the profits to be derived from the efficient use of chance.

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

Edward de Bono
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. They just go and look it up or they just chat with someone. In other words, relying on something rather than saying: "Okay, I've got the information, how do I create value from it?"

Edward de Bono
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.

Edward de Bono
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.'

Edward de Bono
Analysis is simplifying, breaking down things into parts, picking out strands and elements. Analysis is comparing unknown things with things that are known. Analysis also involves picking out relationships and putting them back together as a whole.

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

Edward de Bono
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.

Edward de Bono
An idea is far more fertile if seduced rather than raped.

Edward de Bono
Those who assert that technology has done more harm than good are thinking of a romantic dream world in which a select elite lived a short life of ease and intellectual sophistication surrounded by a population living an even shorter life of poverty, starvation and disease.

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

Edward de Bono
Pouncing on an idea as soon as it appears kills the idea. Too early and too enthusiastic logical attention either freezes the idea or forces it into the old moulds. Concentration on an idea isolates it from its surroundings and arrests its growth. The glare of attention inhibits the fertile semi-conscious processes that go to develop an idea.

Edward de Bono
When you have got somewhere interesting, that is the time to look back and pick out the surest way of getting there again. Sometimes it is very much easier to see the surest route to a place only after you have arrived. You may have to be at the top of a mountain to find the easiest way up.

Edward de Bono
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.

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

Edward de Bono
A person who knows all the answers, has an opinion on everything, has a certainty backed up by rational argument, has very little possibility of further progress. Such a person is unlikely to walk away from a discussion with anything more than a reaffirmation of how right he or she has been all along.

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

Edward de Bono
Creative thinking — in terms of idea creativity — is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practised and nurtured. You can never tell how a policy has been reached just by looking at the end result. Some people who have achieved a huge amount do not come across as impressive when you speak to them.

Edward de Bono
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.

Edward de Bono
A flock of sheep was moving slowly down a country lane which was bounded by high banks. A motorist in a hurry came up behind the flock and urged the shepherd to move his sheep to the side so that the car could drive through. The shepherd refused since he could not be sure of keeping all the sheep out of the way of the car in such a narrow lane. Instead he reversed the situation. He told the car to stop and then he quietly turned the flock round and drove it back past the stationary car.

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

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

Edward de Bono