Edward de Bono Quotes
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Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea.
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An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
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Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.
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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.
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Only the human brain can deliberately change perceptions, change patterns, invent concepts and tolerate ambiguity.
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Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.
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To deal with future we have to deal with possibilities. Analysis will only tell us what is.
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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
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Our existing thinking habits are excellent, just as the rear wheels of a motor car are excellent, but not enough.
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The simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.
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We still seek to solve conflicts with 'judgement' instead of designing the way forwards.
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The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt.
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The quality of our thinking will determine the quality of our future
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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.
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Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.
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The purpose of art is to reflect new emerging values and to define the new heroes and heroines so that people can absorb them into their perceptions.
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The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
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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.
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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.
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Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
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With vertical thinking one may look for different approaches until one finds a promising one. With lateral thinking one goes on generating as many approaches as one can even after one has found a promising one. With vertical thinking one is trying to select the best approach but with lateral thinking one is generating different approaches for the sake of generating them.
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I know it aches, how your heart it breaks. You can only take so much. Walk on.
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What is urgent will always take precedence over what is important.
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(...) 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.
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Although feelings are not supposed to intrude on business discussions, they do anyway - we just disguise them as logic.
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You do not go out into the street in your underwear, although usually you are wearing underwear. The underwear is not visible but it is there all the time. It is the same with concepts. They are there. They underlie practical things we do- even when we are not conscious of them.
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A question is a polite way of demanding something.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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