Tony Buzan Quotes

People simply learn to process information to the point where it doesn't serve true creativity.

I always look on imagination as one of the most powerful things we can cultivate in young people. If they have a good, active imagination, they can cope with life better; they are... able to imagine possibilities and to think around problems.

I just get silly inside my head and I start to think about something and in my head I start twisting it around, contorting it and envisioning it in different ways.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

Today much of what we call education is merely knowledge gathering and remembering. Problem solving and thinking, never strong parts of our educational system, have been downgraded in all but a few scientific subjects.

But I never let a fantasy get away, because I always stop to analyze it.

Smart people are a dime a dozen. What matters is the ability to think different... to think out of the box.

Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.

The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.

The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.

Writing's a great skill, but thinking's a better one.

In most schools, we measure children on what they know. By and large, they have to memorize the content of whatever test is coming up. Because measuring the results of rote learning is easy, rote prevails. What kids know is just not important in comparison with whether they can think.

In my mind, numbers and words are far more than squiggles of ink on a page. They have form, color, texture and so on. They come alive to me, which is why as a young child I thought of them as my 'friends.'

Thinking - in particular abstract thinking, which most of us are introduced to through the study of mathematics and literature - helps us learn that we can become problem solvers.

Well, I'll say I have an incredible ability to fantasize - I really do. I don't have to have things tangible to be able to see them, and therefore I enjoy so many things, because they're in my mind.

There is an idea that a mind is wasted on the arts unless it makes you good in math or science. There is some evidence that the arts might help you in math and science.

I would urge everyone to start looking at the world in a different way. Spend some time looking at everyday objects, at their design, their shape, their individual characteristics. Think ahead and imagine their significance.

I have such a rich fantasy life, I can't help it. I do make up a lot of romantic stories in my head.

When you're a kid, your first five or six years, you converge all the time. School is about training that out of you, especially universities.

The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original thinking, by endeavors to form new combinations, and to discover new truths, than by passively receiving the impressions of other men's ideas.

Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.

I don't like the intellectual label.

Logical activity is not the whole of intelligence. One can be intelligent without being particularly logical.

I want to show people it's not elitist to be a deep thinker.

I find it fascinating that you can look at the same problem from different perspectives and approach it using different methods.