Jonah Lehrer Quotes

Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.

The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.

The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.

What I do, basically, is look at things from different angles. That is what I do on stage comedically, and that is what I do in art. I was always fascinated by the structure of things, why things work this way and not that way. So I like to see how things behave if you change the point of view.

All of our existing ideas have creative possibilities.

The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.

Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again.

We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.

Creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have. It is, for example, and this may surprise you, absolutely unrelated to IQ, provided you're intelligent above a certain minimal level.

A new principle is an inexhaustible source of new views.

Innovation comes from recombining existing technology and different perspectives in innovative ways.

If you can't solve a problem, it's because you're playing by the rules

It's not the ink, it's the think.

There's always something new by looking at the same thing over and over.

Man's most valuable faculty is his imagination.

Sheer necessity,-the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention.

By the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached.

Where ideas are concerned, America can be counted on to do one of two things: Take a good idea and run it completely into the ground, or take a bad idea and run it completely into the ground.

I always thought problem solving was greatly overrated - and that the most important thing was problem creation.

You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.

To use your head, you have to go out of your mind.

When you venture at life with curiosity, you can learn from anything. You learn from things that you could never maybe thought you could learn from. And when you actually step into the room with a lot of people who have an education in a classroom, that is very similar to other people's educations, you'll actually come with a unique perspective that could be a valuable perspective that creates an innovation that could change the world.

One of the enemies of creativity and innovation, especially in relation to our own development, is common sense.

The great thing about living in New York is the constant change of things. It inspires me to keep moving, push forward, question ideas. I have a heavy travel schedule so being in a new environment always gives me another perspective to see things from.