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Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

Edward de Bono

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

Existence Ideas Immortal Spring
Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
EDWARD DE BONO

Analysis Believe Business Data Executive Ideas Mindset Perspective Science Wrong
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Fight Lesson Listening Teaching Thinking Time
Western traditions of education have emphasized knowledge analysis, description and debate. They all have a part to play, but today there is a whole vast aspect of doing that has just been left out. Operacy is what keeps society going.
EDWARD DE BONO

Analysis Debate Description Education Society Tradition
Man owes his success to his creativity. No one doubts the need for it. It is most useful in good times and essential in bad.
EDWARD DE BONO

Bad Creativity Doubt Essential Man Need Success
The simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.
EDWARD DE BONO

Creativity Focus Powerful Process Simplicity Source
If you never change your mind, why have one?
EDWARD DE BONO

Change Mindset Oneself Yourself
Don’t criticise a hypothesis, come up with a better one.
EDWARD DE BONO

Better Criticism Oneself
People should realize we’re jerks just like them.
EDWARD DE BONO

People Realize
I’m a very loyal and unreliable friend.
EDWARD DE BONO

Friendship Loyalty Myself
Although feelings are not supposed to intrude on business discussions, they do anyway – we just disguise them as logic.
EDWARD DE BONO

Business Discussion Feeling Logic
We need both information and thinking. Information is no substitute for thinking and thinking is no substitute for information.
EDWARD DE BONO

Information Need Substitute Thinking
What is urgent will always take precedence over what is important.
EDWARD DE BONO

Important Urgent
If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd.
EDWARD DE BONO

Crowd Opportunity Wait Willing
Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.
EDWARD DE BONO

Car Mistake Production Remove
Intelligence is something we are born with. Thinking is a skill that must be learned.
EDWARD DE BONO

Born Intelligence Learning Skill Thinking
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
Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.
EDWARD DE BONO

Creativity Fun Interest Life
Teaching thinking for just five hours to unemployed youngsters increased employment 500 percent.
EDWARD DE BONO

Employment Teaching Thinking
On trade, our hypocrisy is at its most appalling. Trade reform isn’t about charity, it’s about justice, and this campaign, Trade Justice is an unstoppable idea.
EDWARD DE BONO

Charity Hypocrisy Idea Justice Stop Trade
Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone.
EDWARD DE BONO

Achievement Creativity Possible
We still seek to solve conflicts with ‘judgement’ instead of designing the way forwards.
EDWARD DE BONO

Design Judgement Seek
Language is the biggest barrier to human progress because language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Old perceptions are frozen into language and force us to look at the world in an old fashioned way.
EDWARD DE BONO

Fashion Human Language Progress Way
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
The purpose of art is to reflect new emerging values and to define the new heroes and heroines so that people can absorb them into their perceptions.
EDWARD DE BONO

Absorb Art Perception Purpose Reflection Value
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Beyond Doubt Improvement Right Sacred Way
To deal with future we have to deal with possibilities. Analysis will only tell us what is.
EDWARD DE BONO

Analysis Deal Future Possible

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

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Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

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