Edward de Bono > Quotes

“A discussion should be a genuine attempt to explore a subject rather than a battle between competing egos.”
― Edward De Bono, How to Have a Beautiful Mind

“If you never change your mind, why have one?”
― Edward de Bono

“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, The Use of Lateral Thinking

“The image that concerns most people is the reflection they see in other people's minds.”
― Edward De Bono

“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

“A good listener is very nearly as attractive as a good talker. You cannot have a beautiful mind if you do not know how to listen.”
― Edward De Bono, How to Have a Beautiful Mind

“The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to defend but not quite enough to innovate.”
― Edward De Bono, I Am Right You Are Wrong

“A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.”
― Edward De Bono

“Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.”
― Edward De Bono

“We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving.”
― Edward De Bono, Six Thinking Hats

“We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.”
― Edward de Bono

“There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.”
― Edward de Bono

“Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of the car is separate from the way the car is driven.”
― Edward De Bono

“A question is a polite way of demanding something.”
― Edward De Bono, How to Have a Beautiful Mind

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

“(...) being right all the time acquires a huge importance in education, and there is this terror of being wrong. The ego is so tied to being right that later on in life you are reluctant to accept that you are ever wrong, because you are defending not the idea but your self-esteem. (...) this terror of being wrong means that people have enormous difficulties in changing ideas.”
― Edward De Bono, Po: Beyond Yes and No

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

“You do not go out into the street in your underwear, although usually you are wearing underwear. The underwear is not visible but it is there all the time. It is the same with concepts. They are there. They underlie practical things we do- even when we are not conscious of them.”
― Edward De Bono, How to Have a Beautiful Mind

“Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.”
― Edward de Bono

“In 80% of Socrates' dialogues there was no constructive outcome. He saw his role as simply pointing out what was "wrong.”
― Edward De Bono

“The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. 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

“Simplicity before understanding is simplistic; simplicity after understanding is simple.
- Edward De Bono”
― Edward De Bono

“Creativity involves provocation, exploration and risk taking. Creativity involves "thought experiments." You cannot tell in advance how the experiment is going to turn out. But you want to be able to carry out the experiment.”
― Edward de Bono, Six Thinking Hats

“If you understand the system you can design appropriate action.”
― Edward De Bono, Think!: Before It's Too Late

“Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.”
― Edward de Bono

“Unfortunately, our existing traditional thinking habits insist that you must attack something and show it to be bad before you can suggest a change. It is more difficult to acknowledge that something is excellent and then to ask for change because although it is excellent, it is not enough.”
― Edward De Bono, Think!: Before It's Too Late

“Democracy is an excellent way of ensuring that nothing much gets done. There are always interests that might get trampled upon [and no elected politician would wish to make permanent enemies by trampling upon others' interests].”
― Edward De Bono, I Am Right You Are Wrong

“There may be more danger in prejudices which are apparently founded in logic than in those which are acknowledged as emotions. (p69)”
― Edward De Bono, Six Thinking Hats

“To cultivate a pleasure in being wrong sounds perverse, yet losing an argument means escaping from an old idea and the acquisition of a new way of looking at things.”
― Edward De Bono, Lateral Thinking: An Introduction

“It may be that Japanese culture is not ego-based like Western culture: argument has often a strong ego base. The most likely explanation is that Japanese culture was not influenced by those Greek thinking idioms which were refined and developed by medieval monks as a means of proving heretics to be wrong. (p36)”
― Edward De Bono, Six Thinking Hats