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Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin - more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

People hate thinking--they do almost anything to avoid it. I have created an international reputation for myself by doing it once or twice a week.

... the test of a first class mind is the ability to hold two opposing views in the head at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.

When it becomes necessary to develop a new perception of things, a new internal model of reality, the problem is never to get new ideas in, the problem is to get the old ideas out. Every mind is full of old furniture. It's familiar. It's comfortable. We hate to throw it out. The old maxim, so often applied to the physical world, "Nature abhors a vacuum" is much more applicable to the mental world. Clear any room in your mind of old perspectives and new perceptions will rush in. Yet there is nothing we fear more.

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Never fall in love with an idea. They're whores: If the one you're with isn't doing the job, there's always, always, always another.

Stronger than all the armies on earth is an idea whose time has come.

The real work of critical inquiry is to examine what we think we know in order to learn about what we do not know. We must question our givens and opinions. For it is far easier to label than to understand, and intellectual laziness undermines our studies with the deadly inversion of the scientific method: "I'll believe it when I see it!" becomes "I'll see it when I believe it!"

Business managers are trained for action and speed - hence the "ready, fire, aim" mentality now prevalent in so many organizations. Far too often, thinking is seen as a luxury, and collective thinking as an aberration. The link between shared understanding and effective collective action is not widely understood or recognized. Under these circumstances, asking managers to accelerate shared learning is asking them to unlearn the fundamental behaviors that they have used throughout their careers. This unlearning requires a shift in their basic assumptions.

To accelerate shared learning, there needs to be a shift in managers' thinking from "I lead" to "we learn." It is a fundamental shift, from viewing the individual manager as problem solver to seeing the manager as the creator of an accelerated shared learning environment.

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability.

If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.

I think that most of our intelligence is based on pattern recognition. Human thinking is actually not very good at logical and analytical thinking. We are very good at recognizing patterns.

It can be proved through experiments that people are not conscious of the reasons why they make a decision...People do not know what has influenced their decision and often invent reasons for their choice afterward. Only a small part of decision making reaches the conscious mind, while most decision making, just as most thinking, is below this threshold of consciousness. You know what you are thinking, but you do not know why you are thinking it.

...I run experiments both with experienced managers and with university students. Overall, the students do much better. It's always the same story: People are guided too much by little-understood experience and make the wrong generalizations. Less experience can be advantageous when it forces you to think harder.

We haven't done a good job of teaching critical thinking and creative problem-solving. People find critical thinking difficult because it's a radical switch from their 20 years of education in solving well-structured problems. We've produced a nation of certainty junkies, where if you can't define a problem with precision and certainty, people go crazy. Well, welcome to the real world. The game has changed. Problems change as fast as you're working on them. Indeed, they change because you're working on them-or not working on them.

We often fail to make a distinction about two kinds of learning. The first kind of learning, which is far more common and more easily achieved, is to deepen our knowledge within an existing mental model or discipline. The second kind of learning is focused on new mental models and on shifting from one to another. It is does not deepen knowledge in a specific model but rather looks at the world outside the model and adopts or develops new models to make sense of this broader world.

Most of us prefer being precisely wrong rather than vaguely right.

Business thinking starts with an intuitive choice of assumptions. Its progress as analysis is intertwined with intuition. The final choice is always intuitive. If that were not true, all problems of almost any kind would be solved by mathematicians with nonquantitative data.

The final choice in all business decision is, of course, intuitive. It must be. Otherwise it is not a decision, just a conclusion, a printout.

The tradeoff of subjective nonquantifiable values is by definition a subjective and intuitive choice. Intuition can be awesome in its value at times. It is known as good judgment in everyday affairs. Intuition is in fact the subconscious integration of all the experiences, conditioning and knowledge of a lifetime, including the emotional and cultural biases of that lifetime.

But intuition alone is never enough. Alone it can be disastrously wrong. Analysis too can be disastrously wrong. Analysis depends upon keeping the required data to manageable proportions. It also means keeping the nonquantifiable data to a minimum. Thus analysis by its very nature requires initial oversimplification and intuitive choice of starting assumptions with exclusion of certain data. All of these choices are intuitive. A mistake in any one can be fatal to the analysis.

...When the results of analysis and intuition coincide, there is little gained except confidence. When the analysis reaches conclusions that are counterintuitive, then more rigorous analysis and reexamination of underlying assumptions are always called for. The expansion of the frame of reference and the increased rigor of analysis may be fruitful.

...Intuition disguised as status, seniority and rank is the underlying normative mode of all business decisions. It could not be otherwise. Too many choices must be made too often. Data is expensive to collect, often of uncertain quality or relevance. Analysis is laborious and often far too expensive even though imprecise or superficial.

...The first definition of a problem is inescapably intuitive. It must be in order to be recognized as a problem at all. The final decision is intuitive. It must be or there is no choice and therefore no need for decision.

Between those two points of beginning and ending, the rigorous process must take place. The sequence is analysis, problem redefinition, reanalysis and then even more rigorous problem redefinition, etc. until the law of diminishing returns dictates a halt intuitively.

Nothing substitutes depth of analysis and there's proven value in the methodical and incremental process of specialization - it's what education, career paths, scientific research, and technological innovation are built on - but generalism is the hidden talent, the missing link. With so much complex information, that is fragmented in so many ways and developing faster and faster, it is increasingly important to have generalists around to make sense of it all. People who appreciate diversity, who are in the know about the wider world, and who understand how things interact are invaluable observers, matchmakers, and pioneers of the intersectional ideas that are vital to success in today's global society and knowledge economy.

The final act of business judgment is of course intuitive. Â…. But the big work behind business judgement is in finding and acknowledging the facts and circumstances concerning technology, the market, and the like in their continuously changing forms.

Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

As adults, when we try to solve a problem, we often ask, "What does this mean?" We try to pull the answer from our knowledge bank, just like finding the solution in an encyclopedia. Solve the problem the way it has been solved in the past. This can be useful, but it provides a limited set of possibilities. This is about replication and regurgitation. An alternative (and more insightful) way of looking at problems is to ask, "What is this like?" Be a matchmaker. Make connections. Try and find analogies, metaphors, and associations that fit the problem you are looking to solve. Recombine ideas in new ways. ...When you have many dots collected, you have limitless ways of recombining them to create something new. This is not about invention, which is pulling something out of the thin air. This is about innovation which is about reconstituting old ideas in new ways. Don't always go for the obvious solution. Some of the best ideas come from some of the most unlikely combinations.

People tend to overvalue advice when the problem they're addressing is hard and to undervalue it when the problem is easy.

Another advice-related bias I've found compels people to overvalue advice that they pay for.

Most claims of originality are testimony to ignorance and most claims of magic are testimony to hubris.

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

As intellectual historian Crane Brinton pointed out in his book Ideas and Men: The Story of Western Thought, fields of study such as philosophy, religion, and politics generate "noncumulative" knowledge as opposed to the scientific domain, where knowledge is "cumulative" and progress is genuine. The real problem with arts or noncumulative fields of study is that, unlike the sciences, they never prune their trees of knowledge. They add but they do not subtract. Artifacts come in and out of fashion, but they never disappear completely and they can be revived at any time.

Management seems to fall into Dr. Brinton's noncumulative category. Students of the subject are presented with a dense jungle of often conflicting theories, principles, and practices, most of which are backed up by either folklore or anecdotal evidence rather than by scientific data. Different approaches appear, are adopted enthusiastically, and then disappear, only to be reincarnated later under new names.

The data that we observe, whether personally or organizationally, is selected, filtered, and interpreted through our assumptions and beliefs. To a great degree we "see what we believe" and are unable to perceive data that lies outside our existing mental models. Our current way of thinking, whether it be personal or collective, governs our perception of reality and thus holds great influence in our ability to create what we desire.

So, what kind of conversation would it take to cause us to think more clearly and more accurately? Unfortunately, thinking about thinking is particularly difficult, rather like the eye trying to see itself. And if that weren't enough, it's also threatening for people to expose their thinking, whether to themselves or others, because often we discover that it is flawed. This is embarrassing enough, but it is compounded when people's identities are wrapped up in their perceptions of how intelligent they are.

Darwin paid particular attention to disconfirming evidence. Objectivity maintenance routines are totally required in life if you're going to be a great thinker. There, we're talking about Darwin's special attention to disconfirming evidence and also about checklist routines. Checklist routines avoid a lot of errors. You should have all this elementary wisdom and then you should go through a mental checklist in order to use it. There is no other procedure in the world that will work as well.

The packaging of big ideas can sometimes add as much value as the content itself.

Lyle's Law of Certitude: The more certain you are that you are correct, the more imperative it is to consider that you might be wrong.

The most effective way people can change a story is to view it through any of three new lenses, which are all alternatives to seeing the world from the victim perspective. With the reverse lens, for example, people ask themselves, "What would the other person in this conflict say and in what ways might that be true?" With the long lens they ask, "How will I most likely view this situation in six months?" With the wide lens they ask themselves, "Regardless of the outcome of this issue, how can I grow and learn from it?" Each of these lenses can help people intentionally cultivate more positive emotions.