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A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.

Edward de Bono

Opportunity ideas do not lie around waiting to be discovered. Such ideas need to be produced.
EDWARD DE BONO

Discover Ideas Lying Need Opportunity Production
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Action Problem Situation Time Way
Most people are put off science because maths is the gateway and they can’t handle it. What we should be teaching is operational maths because, in general, the maths we need to carry out science is pretty straightforward.
EDWARD DE BONO

Operational People Science Teaching
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Attention Change Humor Mindset Paid Philosophy Reason Surprise
You can analyse the past, but you have to design the future.
EDWARD DE BONO

Analysis Design Future Past Yourself
Possibilities play a much bigger role in thinking than most people believe. Without possibilities you cannot make progress.
EDWARD DE BONO

Play Possible Progress Thinking
The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results.
EDWARD DE BONO

Best Chef Ingredient Result Win
Complexity creates confusion, simplicity focus.
EDWARD DE BONO

Complex Creation Creativity Focus Simplicity
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Avoidance Important Place Problem System
I think there is a danger with young people of being dependent in the sense that they don’t acquire any identity or self-image of themselves as thinkers.
EDWARD DE BONO

Dangerous Identity Image People Thinking Young
Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
EDWARD DE BONO

Activity Brain Human Humor
The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
EDWARD DE BONO

Mindset Preparation See
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
To develop thinking as a skill, it should be deliberate, focused, confident, and enjoyable.
EDWARD DE BONO

Confidence Development Enjoyment Skills
Our existing thinking habits are excellent, just as the rear wheels of a motor car are excellent, but not enough.
EDWARD DE BONO

Enough Excellence Existence Habit Thinking
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.’
EDWARD DE BONO

Finding Philosophy Thinking
The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt.
EDWARD DE BONO

God Music Recognition Run
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Children Deal Establishment Greatness Route Work Young
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.
EDWARD DE BONO

Better Enough Ideas Right Wrong
Every valuable creative idea must always be logical in hindsight. If it were not, we would never be able to see its value.
EDWARD DE BONO

Creativity Idea Value
You cannot look in a new direction by looking harder in the same direction.
EDWARD DE BONO

Direction Hard Yourself
Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.
EDWARD DE BONO

Creativity Fun Interest Life
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
They enjoy thinking. They enjoy being creative. They enjoy having ideas. Most people do not enjoy thinking at all.
EDWARD DE BONO

Creativity Enjoyment Ideas Thinking
An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
EDWARD DE BONO

Attention Expert Ignorance Judgement Pay Success
Teaching thinking for just five hours to unemployed youngsters increased employment 500 percent.
EDWARD DE BONO

Employment Teaching Thinking
Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone.
EDWARD DE BONO

Achievement Creativity Possible

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.

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A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.

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