Daily Inspiration Quote by Edward de Bono

De Bono’s jab lands because it punctures a flattering modern superstition: that “smart” automatically means “clear.” By separating intelligence from thinking skill, he treats IQ like horsepower - impressive on paper, useless if the driver can’t steer. It’s a deliberately unromantic metaphor, and that’s the point. He’s trying to demote raw cognitive firepower and promote something less glamorous but more controllable: technique.

The subtext is mildly accusatory. If you’re “highly intelligent” and still produce sloppy arguments, impulsive decisions, or fashionable opinions you can’t defend, you don’t get to hide behind talent. You’ve been coasting. De Bono’s broader project - lateral thinking, the Six Thinking Hats - was always about making thinking procedural rather than mystical. He’s arguing that good thinking is a practice with habits, constraints, and tools, not a personality trait bestowed at birth.

There’s also a quiet democratizing message. Average intelligence isn’t a ceiling; it’s a starting line. Skilled thinking can be taught, rehearsed, and improved, which is both comforting (you can get better) and destabilizing (you have no excuse not to). In a culture that treats “giftedness” as moral worth, the car-and-driver split is a corrective: capability isn’t character. What matters is how you handle it under real conditions - uncertainty, bias, ego, pressure - where most “brilliance” quietly crashes.