Michael J. Gelb Quotes

By stretching yourself beyond your perceived level of confidence you accelerate your development of competence.

Life is a continuous exercise in creative problem solving.

Innovation is the creation and delivery of new customer value in the marketplace.

Champions know that success is inevitable, that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. They know that the best way to forecast the future is to create it.

Confusion is the welcome mat at the door of creativity.

Over-seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureaucratic thinking. People who are seriously committed to mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up.

Crazy people who are productive are geniuses. Crazy people who are rich are eccentric. Crazy people who are neither productive nor rich are just plain crazy. Geniuses and crazy people are both out in the middle of a deep ocean; geniuses swim, crazy people drown. Most of us are sitting safely on the shore. Take a chance and get your feet wet.

Keeping your mind open in the face of uncertainty is the single most powerful secret of unleashing your creative potential.

Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually limitless, which makes every human a potential genius.

A champion views resistance as a gift of energy.

We have more possibilities, more freedom, more options than any people who have ever lived. Yet there is more junk, more mediocrity, more garbage to sort through than ever, too.

A new and speculative idea, which although it may seem trivial and almost laughable, is nonetheless of great value in quickening the spirit of invention.

You can increase your problem-solving skills by honing your question-asking ability.

The most advanced, creative and original thinking is always a product of historical context and the influences of previous geniuses, mentors, and collaborators on the mind of the originator.

How does your experience of one sense affect all the others? In addition to being the conduits of pleasure and pain, your senses are the midwives of intelligence.

As you embrace the process-oriented approach described in The Practicing Mind, you'll achieve better results in any endeavor.

Surrounded by noises from televisions, airplanes, subways and automobiles, most of us 'tune out' for self-protection.