Edward de Bono
Title: Professor Edward Charles Francis Publius de Bono
Full Name: Edward Charles Francis Publius de Bono
Birthdate: May 19, 1933
Birthplace: Malta
Date of Death: June 9, 2021
Occupation: Author and Physician
Profile: Theorist on creative and lateral thinking. Best known for the World Center for New Thinking and Peace Studies.
Website: http://debono.com/
Number of Quotes: 77
A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
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.
An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgments simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.
Better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
Businessmen are like whales. Only the ones that come up with ideas get harpooned.
Creative thinking – in terms of idea creativity – is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practised and nurtured.
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.
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.
Do not confuse movement with progress.
Effort is a measure of the poor design.
Emotions are the mainframe of our thinking, not the peripherals.
Every valuable creative idea will always be logical in hindsight.
Fights are usually about dominance. Arguments are usually about ego-performances. The purpose of thinking should be to get somewhere.
Humour is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
Humour is probably the most significant characteristics of the human mind. Far
more significant than reason. In fact, reason is actually a very cheap commodity.
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.
I must say, I don't feel very qualified to be a pop star. I feel very awkward at times in the role.
I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be brilliant.
I think school is a place where thinking should be taught.
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.
If you never change your mind, why have one?
If you do not design the future, someone or something else will design it for you.
If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd.
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.
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.
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.
It is well known that problem avoidance
is an important part of problem solving. Instead of solving
the problem you go upstream and alter the system so that the problem does not occur in the first place.
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.
It's always amazed me how little attention philosophers, psychologists, or anyone else actually has paid to humor.
It's always easier to dig a hole than to build a hill.
Logic is the tool that is used to dig holes deeper and bigger, to make them altogether better holes. But
if the hole is in the wrong place, then no amount of improvement is going to put it in the right place.
Logic will never change emotion or perception.
Low probability ideas are often much better than high probability ideas. The reason
is that with a high probability idea, many people will have had the same idea.
Many brilliant ideas are lost because the people who have them can't stand the laughter.
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.
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.
Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.
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.
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.
Opportunity ideas do not lie around waiting to be discovered. Such ideas need to be produced.
People are generally better at thinking their way out of something than into something.
People should realize we're jerks just like them.
People spend their lives worrying about the future. But the only way to create a satisfactory future is to take control of the present.
Perception is real even when it is not reality.
Problem-solving is a more precise and definable process than the fuzzier
process of design or opportunity-creation.
Provocation is an important part of creativity. We need to be provocative to get out of the main track of thinking.
Removing the faults in a stagecoach may produce a perfect stagecoach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.
Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.
Simplicity before understanding is simplistic; simplicity after understanding is simple.
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.
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.
Teaching thinking for just five hours to unemployed youngsters increased employment 500 percent.
The aim of thinking is to remove the need to think.
The analysis of data will not by itself produce new ideas.
The greatest enemy of thinking is complexity, for that leads to confusion. When
thinking is clear and simple, it becomes more enjoyable and more effective.
The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas.
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 quality of our thinking will determine the quality of our future.
The simplest words can be the most powerful: What if...?
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.
There are three reasons for wanting to be able to think well. The first is to avoid making mistakes and
errors. The second is to be able to see opportunities. The third is in the hope of being able to help others.
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.
To be successful you have to be lucky, or a little mad, or very talented, or find yourself in a rapid-growth field.
Tradition is the enemy of new thinking.
True intelligence is not about having more knowledge but about knowing how to act effectively.
Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
Unhappiness is the difference between our talents and our expectations.
We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way.
We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.
What the joke displays is a switch in perception. This is important in changing the way we think.
Why didn't I think of that? Because you weren't thinking in that direction.
Without a clear destination, you are unlikely to arrive anywhere worthwhile.
Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
You cannot look in a new direction by looking harder in the same direction.
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