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What is urgent will always take precedence over what is important.

Edward de Bono

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

Play Possible Progress Thinking
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Creative Empowerment Learning People Production Profit Skills Thinking
Humor is probably the most significant characteristics of the human mind. Far more significant than reason. In fact, reason is actually a very cheap commodity.
EDWARD DE BONO

Cheap Human Humor Mindset Reason
Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.
EDWARD DE BONO

Creativity Fun Interest Life
You can analyse the past, but you have to design the future.
EDWARD DE BONO

Analysis Design Future Past Yourself
A question is a polite way of demanding something.
EDWARD DE BONO

Demand Polite Question
The vertical thinker says: ‘I know what I am looking for.’ The lateral thinker says: ‘I am looking but I won’t know what I am looking for until I have found it.’
EDWARD DE BONO

Finding Philosophy Thinking
To be successful you have to be lucky, or a little mad, or very talented, or find yourself in a rapid growth field.
EDWARD DE BONO

Feild Growth Mad Success Talent
Teaching thinking for just five hours to unemployed youngsters increased employment 500 percent.
EDWARD DE BONO

Employment Teaching Thinking
Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea.
EDWARD DE BONO

Creativity Hope Idea Worth
An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
EDWARD DE BONO

Development Existence Ideas
You can’t dig a different hole by digging the same one deeper.
EDWARD DE BONO

Different Hole Oneself
When the story of these times gets written, we want it to say that we did all we could, and it was more than anyone could have imagined.
EDWARD DE BONO

Imagination Story Time Writing
Creativity and lateral thinking have exactly the same basis as humour.
EDWARD DE BONO

Basis Creativity Thinking
Companies that solely focus on competition will ultimately die. Those that focus on value creation will thrive.
EDWARD DE BONO

Company Competition Death Focus Thrive Ultimate
Intelligence is something we are born with. Thinking is a skill that must be learned.
EDWARD DE BONO

Born Intelligence Learning Skill Thinking
This new meta-system is very much in favor of the self, but a self that is based on a proper sense of dignity, not on an inflated ego. A person who dare not admit he is wrong inflates his ego but weakens his self.
EDWARD DE BONO

Dignity Himself Proper System Weakness Wrong
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Future Possible Preparation Strive
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Children Deal Establishment Greatness Route Work Young
We still seek to solve conflicts with ‘judgement’ instead of designing the way forwards.
EDWARD DE BONO

Design Judgement Seek
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Better Ignorance Moments Oneself Word
It’s not enough to rage against the lie.. you’ve got to replace it with the truth.
EDWARD DE BONO

Enough Lying Replacement Truth
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Allow Analysis Description Purpose Science
Child mortality since 2000 is down by 2.65 million a year. That’s a rate of 7,256 children’s lives saved each day. It drives me nuts that most people don’t seem to know this news.
EDWARD DE BONO

Children Live News People
An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
EDWARD DE BONO

Attention Expert Ignorance Judgement Pay Success
A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
EDWARD DE BONO

Complete Memories
To deal with future we have to deal with possibilities. Analysis will only tell us what is.
EDWARD DE BONO

Analysis Deal Future Possible

What is urgent will always take precedence over what is important.

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What is urgent will always take precedence over what is important.

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