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Complexity creates confusion, simplicity focus.

Edward de Bono

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Edward de Bono
Age: 88 †
Born: 1933
Born: May 19
Died: 2021
Died: June 9
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
Republic of Malta
Edward Charles Francis Publius de Bono
Complexity
Confusion
Creates
Simplicity
Focus

More quotes by Edward de Bono

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The purpose of science is not to analyze or describe but to make useful models of the world. A model is useful if it allows us to get use out of it.
Edward de Bono
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Western traditions of education have emphasized knowledge analysis, description and debate. They all have a part to play, but today there is a whole vast aspect of doing that has just been left out. Operacy is what keeps society going.
Edward de Bono
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There's a danger in the internet and social media. The notion that information is enough, that more and more information is enough, that you don't have to think, you just have to get more information - gets very dangerous.
Edward de Bono
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Man owes his success to his creativity. No one doubts the need for it. It is most useful in good times and essential in bad.
Edward de Bono
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It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
Edward de Bono
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The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to defend but not quite enough to innovate.
Edward de Bono
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Happiness is for those who don't really need it. So I can live without happiness.
Edward de Bono
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It is historical continuity that maintains most assumptions, not repeated assessment of their validity.
Edward de Bono
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My thinking was taught to tribes in South Africa like the Zulus and Xhosas. At the time there were about 210 fights breaking out among them every month, but after they listened to my lessons, this fell to just four.
Edward de Bono
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Language is the biggest barrier to human progress because language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Old perceptions are frozen into language and force us to look at the world in an old fashioned way.
Edward de Bono
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Only the human brain can deliberately change perceptions, change patterns, invent concepts and tolerate ambiguity.
Edward de Bono
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We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving.
Edward de Bono
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It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.
Edward de Bono
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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.
Edward de Bono
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Asking a question is the simplest way of focusing thinking...asking the right question may be the most important part of thinking.
Edward de Bono
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In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better.
Edward de Bono
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Being right is not too difficult. Your choose your perception. You select your information. You leave out what does not suit you. You drag in some general-purpose value words. You throw in a sneer or two about the opposition, and you are a fine fellow who made a fine speech.
Edward de Bono
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You cannot look in a new direction by looking harder in the same direction.
Edward de Bono
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Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
Edward de Bono
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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.'
Edward de Bono