“The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.”

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.

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.

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

A characteristic of intuitive solutions and new ideas is that of being obvious once they are discovered.

Asking a question is the simplest way of focusing thinking asking the right question may be the most important part of thinking.

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

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.

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.

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.

Possibilities play a much bigger role in thinking than most people believe. Without possibilities you cannot make progress.

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.

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

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.

Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.

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

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.

In Germany, an effort one thousandth the scale of the American was applied to the problem of producing atomic energy that would drive engines.

When I was about 12 years old back in Houston, my Dad used to take us to the driving range.

When I was 16 my dad taught me to drive too. Furiously. Unable to understand why I couldn’t already do it – for driving, to him, was innate in the human. It was what separated us from the apes. And from the French, who weren’t much good at it either.

My wife wants sex in the back of the car and she wants me to drive.

I used to pretend that my Peugeot driving to the gym in the rain in Dublin was a Ferrari on the Vegas strip.

Have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complains.

Obey God in all things today! Drive out the enemy!

First you learn to drive fast. Next, you learn to drive fast in traffic. Then, you learn how to do it for 500 miles.