Clive Anderson Quotes

I refused to accept anything, doubted everything. So, doubting everything, I had to find something that had not existed before, something I had not thought of before. Any idea that came to me, the thing would be to turn it around and try to see it with another set of senses.

We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently.

Have an open mind - allow different ideas into your way of thinking.

My own way of thinking is very conservative, very linear and not particularly imaginative, but if I look for things in different places, sometimes things happen.

The best way to renew thought is to go outside the human imagination.

I'm good at thinking outside the box, so much that you realise it's not a box to begin with.

I write books to open people's minds, to present new perspectives, to make people realize that what they think is obvious is not so obvious, that you can look at a trivial situation from a different angle and suddenly reveal other meanings and levels.

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it's not random.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Take advantage of the ambiguity in the world. Look at something and think what else it might be.

It's always good to take an orthogonal view of something. It develops ideas.

Theories, for me, are just about freeing your mind. It doesn't mean the theory is going to work like a scientific theory works. It's about freeing your mind and making you think a different way.

I'm always open to the possibility that somebody's got a better idea than I have. It happens with some frequency.

Don't let what you don't know scare you, because it can become your greatest asset. And if you do things without knowing how they have always been done, you're guaranteed to do them differently.

We have to think big. We have to imagine big, and that's part of the problem. We're letting other people imagine and lead us down what paths they want to take us. Sometimes they're very limited in the way their ideas are constructed. We need to imagine much more broadly. That's the work of a writer, and more writers should look at it.

You cannot rely upon what you have been taught. All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.

Sometimes a problem will seem completely insurmountable. Then someone comes up with a simple new idea, or just a rearrangement of old ideas, that completely eliminates it.

I just like having creative solutions to tricky situations.

Most jobs require some degree of creativity and flexible thinking.

Kids have some of the best ideas - bringing new eyes to old problems.

Thought makes everything fit for use.

Some people are aware of another sort of thinking which... leads to those simple ideas that are obvious only after they have been thought of... the term 'lateral thinking' has been coined to describe this orther sort of thinking; 'vertical thinking' is used to denote the conventional logical process.

If you strike upon a thought that baffles you, break off from that entanglement and try another, so shall your wits be fresh to start again.

With vertical thinking one may look for different approaches until one finds a promising one. With lateral thinking one goes on generating as many approaches as one can even after one has found a promising one. With vertical thinking one is trying to select the best approach but with lateral thinking one is generating different approaches for the sake of generating them.

Lateral thinking... is the process of using information to bring about creativity and insight restructuring. Lateral thinking can be learned, practised and used. It is possible to acquire skill in it just as it is possible to acquire skill in mathematics.