Alan Bradley Quotes

My mother used to say, "Tell your brain you want that piece of information or you want to solve this problem, and then just walk away from it. Just forget about it. Just do something else, completely distract yourself, and you'll see, it's like a computer. Eventually, it will deliver it up." And I find that's really true.

To think is not enough, you must think of something.

Memory feeds imagination.

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.

Creative ability is often mistakenly attributed to inborn talent. It is about all the ability to connect one thing with another.

I've never learned to drive because I get lots of ideas when I'm a passenger in a car. I love to get in a car with a driver and just think and work things out.

You'll always get an idea if you think and don't panic.

As soon as I stopped trying to think about a business idea and started focusing on what I’m passionate about, that’s when it came to me.

The Law of Concentration states that whatever you dwell upon, grows. The more you think about something, the more it becomes part of your reality.

I always thought problem solving was greatly overrated - and that the most important thing was problem creation.

We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.

Worry is focused thinking on something negative. Meditation is doing the same thing only focusing on God's word instead of your problem.

Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.

On my hike my brain was left to wander. That was often maddening because it was tedious and monotonous sometimes, but then my the mind would take over, and that's when I'd start hearing the music in my head or thinking deeply about people I know or things that I didn't even know I remembered anymore. Those thoughts would be there. I wouldn't have had them otherwise.

Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.

When feet doesn't want to hold you, you climb with your head. Maybe it isn't the natural order of things, but isn't it better to walk with your head than to think with your feet, as it happens so frequently?

This is one of my favorites. People think of creativity as this sort of unbridled thing, but engineers thrive on constraints. They love to think their way out of that little box: 'We know you said it was impossible, but we're going to do this, this, and that to get us there.'

To develop thinking as a skill, it should be deliberate, focused, confident, and enjoyable.

Say you're doing a headstand. The moment you think to yourself, "Wow, I'm doing this pose!" is usually the moment you'll topple out of it.

Knowledge is the stuff from which new ideas are made. Thus, the real key to being creative lies in what you do with your knowledge.

Creative people have an abiding curiosity and an insatiable desire to learn how and why things work. They take nothing for granted. They are interested in things around them and tend to stow away bits and pieces of information in their minds for the future use. And, they have a great ability to mobilize their thinking and experiences for use in solving a new problem.

Analysis and synthesis are both as necessary to the thinking spirit as inspiration and expiration to the organism.

In order to have a hope of creating better answers, we need to deeply understand the logic of the opposing answers. That means thinking about how we think about both models - not just do we like one versus the other. Rather we have to ask: How do I think each model produces the results that it does? Metacognition, thinking about thinking, builds up our capacity to do that and to play with opposing ideas - and new models - in real time.

If you're thinking about the idea in the shower. If you're thinking about the idea while you're walking your dog, there's probably something to it.

Complacency with our traditional judgement based thinking methods is not enough. Our existing thinking habits are excellent just as the rear wheel of a motor car is excellent but not enough. We need to put far more emphasis on creative and design thinking. Judgement and analysis are not enough.