42 Quotes by Roger Von Oech

What excuses stand in your way? How can you eliminate them?

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.

If you fall in love with an idea, you won't see the merits of alternative approaches-and will probably miss an opportunity or two. One of life's great pleasures is letting go of a previously cherished idea. Then you're free to look for new ones. What part of your idea are you in love with? What would happen if you kissed it goodbye?

If you don’t execute your ideas, they die.

It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.

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.

Everyone has a ‘risk muscle.’ You keep it in shape by trying new things. If you don’t, it atrophies. Make a point of using it at least once a day.

It’s important for the explorer to be willing to be led astray.

We grow up thinking that the best answer is in someone else’s brain. Much of our education is an elaborate game of ‘guess what’s in the teacher’s head?’ What the world really needs to know right now is what kind of dreams and ideas are in your head.