Brian Eno Quotes

What interests me about thoughts is not the moment when it crystallises into formal ideas but its earlier stages.

Rain on my head, call that brainstorming.

Often when works at a hard question, nothing good is accomplished at the first attack. Then one takes a rest, long or short, and sits down anew to the work. During the first half-hour, as before, nothing is found, and then all of a sudden the decisive idea presents itself to the mind.

To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands.

Abstraction is a mental process we use when trying to discern what is essential or relevant to a problem; it does not require a belief in abstract entities.

Prediction by analogy -creativity - is so pervasive we normally don't notice it.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

When I'm problem-solving with something, I have, effectively, a CAD program in my head that's like a room that has specific qualities to it that I go to some deal of effort to populate. Textures and smells, something like that.

I'll stop when I run out of ideas.

If I have an idea in my head, within no time it's into the computer, it may take more time to make it sound right, but that's the only issue.

A thought functions only as a fragmentary part in the formulation of an idea.

Thinking isn't something you think about. It comes naturally. Thinking involves many things. It involves being an observer. It involves analyzing things, taking in what's around you in the world and finding how to make it inspire your work or turn it into a lesson to teach your children; it's paying attention to details. That's what thinking is: processing.

Thought makes everything fit for use.

Every action is an idea before it is an action, and perhaps a feeling before it is an idea, and every idea rests upon other ideas that have preceded it in time.

I pressed down the mental accelerator. The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea.

An idea is a feat of association.

Ideas are floating like fish. Desire for an idea is like a bait on a hook. If you desire an idea, it pulls and it makes a kind of a bait. Ideas will come swimming up. And you don't know them until they enter the conscious mind. And then bingo! There it is! You know it instantly. And then more come in. If you go fishing for ideas, a lot of ideas will just pop in. And one of them will make you fall in love.

There is a method in his madness, and the rudimentary idea in my mind is growing. It will be a whole idea soon, and then, oh, unconscious cerebration.

Thought engenders thought. Place one idea on paper, another will follow it, and still another, until you have written a page; you cannot fathom your mind. There is a well of thought which has no bottom; the more you draw from it, the more clear and fruitful it will be.

The analysis of data will not by itself produce new ideas.

Design is a thinking process that starts in the head and with sketches. Thinking cannot be done by a computer.

There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas.

A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way, but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.

A mind that is very selective to forms... is apt to use its images metaphorically, to exploit their possible significance for the conception of remote or intangible ideas.