Ken Thompson Quotes

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

If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one.

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

Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.

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

When trying to innovate, most people stop after 10-15 possibilities, failing to recognize that their first ideas are usually the most obvious ones.

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

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.

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.

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

Steve Martin said that philosophy is good for comedy because it screws up your thinking just enough, and I agree with that. Being forced to see life's metadata is good training for looking for interesting angles on a topic.

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

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.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

I have some ideas on how to fix that. They're not very good ideas, but at least they're ideas!

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

Thinking differently is my strength.

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.

We can't get any new thinking because we can't get any new thinkers.

I like... piecing things together because it gives you a product that you would never have come up with just sitting down and writing on a blank slate.

Extraordinary situations require an out-of-box thinking. Conventionalists cannot find such solutions.

I think if you're really good at what you do, you can see outside the box.