Top 100 Edward De Bono Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “In the art world, creativity involves aesthetic sensibility, emotional resonance and a gift for expression.”

— Edward De Bono

52. “Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.”

— Edward De Bono

53. “I know it aches, how your heart it breaks. You can only take so much. Walk on.”

— Edward De Bono

54. “The effective thinker treats arrogance as the major sin of thinking.”

— Edward De Bono

55. “You hold onto religion, you know, rules, regulations, traditions. I think what God is interested in is people’s hearts, and that’s hard enough.”

— Edward De Bono

56. “Unfortunately, our existing traditional thinking habits insist that you must attack something and show it to be bad before you can suggest a change. It is more difficult to acknowledge that something is excellent and then to ask for change because although it is excellent, it is not enough.”

— Edward De Bono

57. “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

58. “A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.”

— Edward De Bono

59. “Although feelings are not supposed to intrude on business discussions, they do anyway – we just disguise them as logic.”

— Edward De Bono

60. “You do not go out into the street in your underwear, although usually you are wearing underwear. The underwear is not visible but it is there all the time. It is the same with concepts. They are there. They underlie practical things we do- even when we are not conscious of them.”

— Edward De Bono

61. “When the story of these times gets written, we want it to say that we did all we could, and it was more than anyone could have imagined.”

— Edward De Bono

62. “A good design is not a democratic consensus.”

— Edward De Bono

63. “Happiness is for those who don’t really need it. So I can live without happiness.”

— Edward De Bono

64. “The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt.”

— Edward De Bono

65. “Only the human brain can deliberately change perceptions, change patterns, invent concepts and tolerate ambiguity.”

— Edward De Bono

66. “Analysis is simplifying, breaking down things into parts, picking out strands and elements. Analysis is comparing unknown things with things that are known. Analysis also involves picking out relationships and putting them back together as a whole.”

— Edward De Bono

67. “Creativity can be learned like basketball, which does not mean we will all be NBA stars.”

— Edward De Bono

68. “Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea.”

— Edward De Bono

69. “Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.”

— Edward De Bono

70. “Creativity involves provocation, exploration and risk taking. Creativity involves “thought experiments.” You cannot tell in advance how the experiment is going to turn out. But you want to be able to carry out the experiment.”

— Edward De Bono

71. “Everywhere I go, I see very much the same thing. I see the same compassion for people who live half a world away. I see the same concern about events beyond these borders. And, increasingly, I see the same conviction that we can and we must join together to stop the scourge of AIDS and poverty.”

— Edward De Bono

72. “The simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.”

— Edward De Bono

73. “Some people drift along like a cork on a river, feeling that they cannot do anything except drift, moment to moment. This is an attitude of mind. Everyone can be constructive even in tiny ways.”

— Edward De Bono

74. “The purpose of art is to reflect new emerging values and to define the new heroes and heroines so that people can absorb them into their perceptions.”

— Edward De Bono

75. “Our existing thinking habits are excellent, just as the rear wheels of a motor car are excellent, but not enough...”

— Edward De Bono

76. “I’m a very loyal and unreliable friend.”

— Edward De Bono

77. “Creativity is a great motivator because it mades people interested in what they are doing.”

— Edward De Bono

78. “They enjoy thinking. They enjoy being creative. They enjoy having ideas. Most people do not enjoy thinking at all.”

— Edward De Bono

79. “To deal with future we have to deal with possibilities. Analysis will only tell us what is.”

— Edward De Bono

80. “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.”

— Edward De Bono

81. “A question is a polite way of demanding something.”

— Edward De Bono

82. “Everyone has the right to doubt everything as often as he pleases and the duty to do it at least once. No way of looking at things is too sacred to be reconsidered. No way of doing things is beyond improvement.”

— Edward De Bono

83. “Once a new idea springs into existence, it cannot be unthought. There is a sense of immortality in a new idea.”

— Edward De Bono

84. “Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain subjective, negative, ungrateful way.”

— Edward De Bono

85. “We need both information and thinking. Information is no substitute for thinking and thinking is no substitute for information.”

— Edward De Bono

86. “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

87. “A problem is simply the difference between what one has and what one wants.”

— Edward De Bono

88. “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

89. “The awful thing is that you can never be aware of what you are not aware of.”

— Edward De Bono

90. “Thinking is the ultimate human resource.”

— Edward De Bono

91. “I think school is a place where thinking should be taught.”

— Edward De Bono

92. “This new meta-system is very much in favor of the self, but a self that is based on a proper sense of dignity, not on an inflated ego. A person who dare not admit he is wrong inflates his ego but weakens his self.”

— Edward De Bono

93. “It wouldn’t cost too much to change the rules of trade so that poor countries can work their way out of poverty. But the world’s leaders won’t act unless they hear enough people telling them. And every day they fail to act, thousands of people die because they can’t afford the basics of survival.”

— Edward De Bono

94. “That wasn’t a mistake, was ’a fully justified venture which, for reasons beyond your control, did not work.”

— Edward De Bono

95. “People should realize we’re jerks just like them.”

— Edward De Bono

96. “Do we have the will to make poverty history?”

— Edward De Bono

97. “Teaching thinking for just five hours to unemployed youngsters increased employment 500 percent.”

— Edward De Bono

98. “On trade, our hypocrisy is at its most appalling. Trade reform isn’t about charity, it’s about justice, and this campaign, Trade Justice is an unstoppable idea.”

— Edward De Bono

99. “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

100. “The Church has its problems, but the older I get, the more comfort I find there.”

— Edward De Bono