Edward de Bono Quotes

I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.

Somebody is going to find a way digitally that is just as innovative. In the end, the tools can change, but there is always someone who can think of something cool to do.

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.

I was just taught very early that if I didn't solve problems, I was headed for a very dark path. Problems were everywhere. Now, even if there are no problems, I look for problems. I'm like, 'You know what? I don't like the way this spoon works. I want to design a new spoon.'

I think we want our kids to grow up to be people who can think outside of the box, be creative and innovators, sort of the forward-thinkers of our future. I think a way to inspire that is through art and music.

Some ways of using our thinking are really inspiring. There are people who use their thinking to race cars. People use their thinking to build rockets to the moon. It's all just a use of your thinking.

As engineers, we were going to be in a position to change the world - not just study it.

Who knows what technology will emerge in the next five years, let alone 20. Yet the education we provide our children now is supposed to last for decades. We cannot train them for jobs that do not even exist yet, but we can provide them with the minds and tools they'll need to adapt to our ever-changing set of circumstances.

The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented.

I try to be a positive person, but I'm also always looking and wondering, 'Maybe this could be done differently.' As soon as your mind is in a critical mode, you're halfway through designing; as soon as you start thinking about whether something could be better, you're already halfway through a solution.

When I look at other products, I naturally think of ways to improve upon what already exists.

Women are both talented and innovative thinkers and tend to use computer science as a tool to solve larger problems.

I see a problem and I invent some sort of solution to it.

Big ideas come from forward thinking people who challenge the norm, think outside the box, and invent the world they see inside rather than submitting to the limitations of current dilemmas

The roots of great innovation are never just in the technology itself. They are always in the wider historical context. They require new ways of seeing. As Einstein put it, 'The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.'

The technical process which is interesting in it's own right but I think the creative process is what's more intriguing to me.

I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it. I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it. I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill. The dove is my emblem.

My talent is getting things to work that people think are many decades in the future. I say we can make them happen now.

Of course you can do it. It doesn't require brilliance. It's just giving yourself permission and then being persistent. Persistent in seeing the problem or opportunity and persistent in thinking about it until you have come up with some interesting ideas that might change the pattern. It's really a mindset, not anything in the objective world - that is the problem.

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

What really makes it an invention is that someone decides not to change the solution to a known problem, but to change the question.

Artists are in the imagining/ prototyping business. Society needs people to be out there thinking of what might be. That cannot be something we just delegate to politicians or technologists.

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

Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands.