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

If you do not design the future, someone or something else will design it for you.

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.

The good news is, we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all the technologies we need, more are being developed…. But we should not wait, we cannot wait, we must not wait.

Government funding that’s coming from the United States is making a huge difference on the ground in the developing world. It’s really palpable – it’s making a huge difference saving lives.

One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that’s been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection.

There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.

If you invest in a girl or a woman, you are investing in everybody else.

God is using all of your experiences, both good and bad, to develop your character to match your calling.

One succeeds in obtaining an equivalent production at a lower price by improving the arts, trades and agriculture and by developing the physical and moral qualities of workers, farmers and craftsmen.

When we invest in women, we invest in a powerful source of global development.