“The image that concerns most people is the reflection they see in other people’s minds.”

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.

It’s not enough to rage against the lie.. you’ve got to replace it with the truth.

The awful thing is that you can never be aware of what you are not aware of.

The quality of our thinking will determine the quality of our future.

How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond?

I want my woman to be the sharper image robot so that she can be turned off.

Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.

I think my being such a nomad let me into acting. I was always having to create a new image whenever we moved.

We have a very precise image – an image at times shameless – of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.

You get an image after you act in a film, but it is not necessary that you last long because of that image.

When I think about the LGBT movement for example, they have had a really intentional strategy to try to change images and representation of LGBT people in the media and the culture.

Human nature, as we know it, is in a formative state. It is being changed into the image of the thing it loves.