John Forbes Nash Jr. Quotes

Companies have too many experts who block innovation. True innovation really comes from perpendicular thinking.

One way we can enliven the imagination is to push it toward the illogical. We're not scientists. We don't always have to make the logical, reasonable leap.

To me, unconventional thinking is approaching a problem and asking, 'Why not? Why can't something be done?' If someone can't give me a good reason why you can't do something, I find a way to do it.

What I often do is just think of a completely obtuse thing to do, almost the wrong thing to do. That often works because you start a different approach, something no one has tried.

To see things differently requires you to be wired a little differently.

In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.

I pride myself on being able to create mismatches. That's what I've done my whole life.

I've always known that I have a different mentality. I can move in different ways and that's for people to realize.

I've got a feeling that with the best coppers - and in fact the best people in any field of work - what sets them apart is a maverick quality. People who are not afraid to bend the rules in order to achieve the universally desired end.

It's important to have people who will say to you that you're really off the beaten track.

The biggest handicap in research is an ability to think outside the box. The handicap is being encumbered by all the conventional wisdom in a given field.

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

I don't think we ought to base our policy on what the conventional wisdom is.... The conventional wisdom usually is wrong.

I like to say it's an attitude of not just thinking outside the box, but not even seeing the box.

I don't think in a box. I think in a sphere.

It's important to be unconventional.

I just try to go outside the box. In fact, I go outside the box so much I go... 'What box!'

What Einstein was able to do was - to use a cliche - think out of the box.

I don't think that genius goes hand in hand with being socially inept or being a sociopath or being a misanthrope, but I do think that it is a mind that can think so differently - so beyond how one is supposed to think.

Creativity is not just for artists. It's for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it's for engineers trying to solve a problem; it's for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way.

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

I wouldn't know how to think inside the box because I don't even know where it is. I wouldn't know how to do it any other way.

Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.

I have a different way of thinking. I think synergistically. I'm not linear in thinking, I'm not very logical.

People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.