David Mamet Quotes

I often try to think about, What sounds like a bad idea, but if you find the right plan of attack, it's actually a really good idea? I spend a lot of time really trying to systematically tackle problems from different angles.

Successful people engage that creative part of their minds and ask, "Well, I wonder how else I can look at this problem? I wonder how else I could deal with this decision? I wonder what other possibilities I have there?"

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

Solutions are not the answer.

Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.

I do a great deal of work with young children, and if you give a child a problem, he may come up with a highly original solution, because he doesn't have the established route to it.

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

I want to find material that piques my interest, keeps me outside the box and challenges me.

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

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

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.

In my experience, if people don't have a sense of humor, they are usually not very good scientists, either.

By the way, intelligence to me isn't just being book-smart or having a college degree; it's trusting your gut instincts, being intuitive, thinking outside the box, and sometimes just realizing that things need to change and being smart enough to change it.

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

We're always looking for candidates that have new approaches to problems.

Hacking involves a different way of looking at problems that no one's thought of.

I see myself as a problem solver, creating solutions.

The how thinker gets problems solved effectively because he wastes no time with futile ifs but goes right to work on the creative how.

The best way to get people to think outside the box is not to create the box in the first place.

The trouble with school is they give you the answer, then they give you the exam. That's not life.

The secret of innovation is to see what all see but think what none think

The vertical thinker says: 'I know what I am looking for.' The lateral thinker says: 'I am looking but I won't know what I am looking for until I have found it.'

I would say that he has a rather limited and uncreative way of looking at the situation.

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical