“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.”

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

Mock the devil, and he will flee from thee.

Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain subjective, negative, ungrateful way.

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.

What the joke displays is a switch in perception. This is important in changing the way we think.

I think school is a place where thinking should be taught.

Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.

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

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.

A question is a polite way of demanding something.

I know it aches, how your heart it breaks. You can only take so much. Walk on.

The Church has its problems, but the older I get, the more comfort I find there.

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.’

Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.

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.

Once a new idea springs into existence, it cannot be unthought. There is a sense of immortality in a new idea.