“The simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.”

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

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

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.

(Japanese Government believes that if you have a big laboratory with all the latest equipment and good funding it will automatically lead to creativity. It doesn’t work that way.

Curiosity is the key to creativity.

My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target.

Art is endless like a river flowing, passing, yet remaining.

But I love stand-up, and it’s where I came from creatively, so it’s something I never want to walk away from.

Creativity is suspended between memory and forgetting.

She is amazingly creative, bringing so much more to a song than just a singer. She is a first-class musician and the most gracious person in the world.

The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?