Edward de Bono Quotes

Ninety-eight percent are boxes, which tells me that a lot of people are in denial. We live and work in boxes. People don't even notice that. Most of what's around us is banal. We live with it. We accept it as inevitable. People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.

Most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.

People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.

The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order that your ideas will upset.

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.

The Pentagon isn't a place that champions individuality and innovation.

People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones.

Tradition" is very often an excuse word for people who don't want to change.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common

People said, ‘You must be mad, or on drugs,’ which I found a bit disappointing. What about imagination? It reflects our time that people sooner assume you’re on drugs or mad, rather than free.

Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.

When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people.

It's uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.

Change terrifies people. They like new, but they don't like new with change.

There is an enormous inertia that prevents people from change. You must always remember that it is impossible to make something better if you don't make it different - the converse is not true, of course. You cannot make something better unless it is different. And different scares the life out of so many people.

Idea-assassins rush forward to kill any new suggestion on the grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, no matter how absurd.

The established order has too many self-protecting economic entities, and not enough people who yet understand what it takes to change.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.

A lot of people just capitulate and say, "Well, that's just the way things are." I think that can be deadly for creative people.

I think that the people who are the loudest about wanting to change you are the people with the least amount of vision and creativity.

The voices of conformity speak so loudly. Don't listen to them. No one does the right thing out of fear. If you ever utter the words, 'We've always done it that way,' I urge you to wash out your mouth with soap.

There's plenty of intelligence in the world, but the courage to do things differently is in short supply.

A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.

People are too prone to think that the actual is the limit of possibility. They believe that all that has been done is all that can be done.

People who begin sentences with "I may be old-fashioned but--" are usually not only old-fashioned but wrong. I never thought the time would come when I should catch myself leading off with that crack. But I feel it coming on right now.