Roger Von Oech

“Flexibility is a requirement for survival.”

“It's difficult to get your creative juices flowing if you're always being practical, following rules, afraid to make mistakes, not looking into outside areas, or under the influence of any of the other mental locks.”

“Knowledge is the stuff from which new ideas are made. Thus, the real key to being creative lies in what you do with your knowledge.”

“By the time the average person finishes college, he or she will have taken over 2,600 tests, quizzes, and exams. The right answer approach becomes deeply ingrained in our thinking. This may be fine for some mathematical problems where there is in fact only one right answer. The difficulty is that most of life isn’t this way. Life is ambiguous; there are many right answers- all depending on what you’re looking for. But if you think there is only one right answer, then you’ll stop looking as soon as you find one.”

“When everyone thinks alike, no one is doing very much thinking.”

“Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.”

“Either you let your life slip away by not doing the things you want to do, or you get up and do them.”