Quotes By Edward De Bono

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

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.

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

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

People should realize we're jerks just like them.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Logic will never change emotion or perception.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.