“America is not just a country, it’s an idea.”

As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems.

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

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.

Effectiveness without values is a tool without a purpose.

Companies that solely focus on competition will ultimately die. Those that focus on value creation will thrive.

You can’t dig a different hole by digging the same one deeper.

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.

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.

Creativity is a great motivator because it mades people interested in what they are doing.

Our existing thinking habits are excellent, just as the rear wheels of a motor car are excellent, but not enough.

I’m a very loyal and unreliable friend.

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.

Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.

To develop thinking as a skill, it should be deliberate, focused, confident, and enjoyable.

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.

The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

We have quite a large area, and that makes it more fun for us – certainly more satisfying, because it doesn’t restrict us to one particular idea or one particular style.

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.

You have to get past the idea that music has to be one thing.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me – shapes and ideas so near to me – so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down.

So every once in a while I get an idea about plumbing, I get an idea about city government, and they come the way they come.

The U.S. – the idea that the U.S. has introduced and imposed principles of international law, that’s hardly even a joke.

You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.