Time & Perspective Quote by Edward de Bono

De Bono’s real target here isn’t the future; it’s the ego dressed up as certainty. The line takes aim at a very specific modern addiction: the prestige of being right, even when the price tag is brittle plans, sunk costs, and institutions that can’t pivot without breaking. He frames “right” as expensive because it often demands overcommitment - to forecasts, to ideologies, to a single narrative that flatters decision-makers by making the world feel legible.

“Flexible and plural” is classic de Bono: a push for lateral thinking as an operating system, not a brainstorming exercise. “Plural” matters because it rejects the tidy, winner-take-all model of truth that dominates boardrooms and politics alike. It implies holding multiple models at once, treating strategy as a portfolio rather than a bet-the-farm prophecy. The subtext is mildly accusatory: if you’re still optimizing for certainty, you’re optimizing for yesterday’s environment.

The context is an era of accelerating complexity - globalization, technological churn, nonlinear crises - where prediction markets repeatedly meet their limits. De Bono is effectively smuggling in a moral argument under managerial language: intellectual humility is not a personality trait, it’s risk management. The rhetorical move that makes it work is the trade: he doesn’t ask you to abandon rigor, he asks you to re-price it. The smart posture isn’t omniscience; it’s readiness.