Life & Wisdom Quote by Roger von Oech

Von Oech is giving you permission to stop treating reality like a multiple-choice test with one correct answer. “Take advantage of the ambiguity” is a pragmatic dare: the world is messy, under-labeled, and constantly changing, so the people who win aren’t the ones who see “clearly,” but the ones who can work productively with fog. He frames ambiguity not as a failure of information, but as surplus possibility.

The second line is the engine. “Look at something and think what else it might be” is basically a manual override for the brain’s default setting: pattern recognition that collapses options fast so you can move on. That efficiency is great for crossing streets; it’s terrible for invention. Von Oech’s intent is to re-open the moment after recognition, when you’ve already named a thing, and ask you to un-name it. That’s where metaphors, prototypes, and new uses live.

The subtext is quietly anti-authoritarian. If meanings are flexible, then categories handed down by institutions - job titles, “the way it’s done,” even what counts as “useful” - aren’t sacred. Ambiguity becomes leverage: a way to slip past rules that only make sense if the world is fixed.

Context matters: von Oech built a career translating creativity into techniques for business and education, the era of brainstorming, lateral thinking, and innovation-as-discipline. This quote fits that tradition: not romantic inspiration, but a repeatable habit. It’s a small prompt with a big implication: treat perception as editable, and you change what you think you’re allowed to build.