How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery

Thinking is finding a way to achieve a goal that cannot be attained by an obvious action.

normal thinking is rich and complex—so rich and complex that it can sometimes yield extraordinary—or “creative”—results. We do not need other processes.

Most of our world is made of innovations inherited from people long forgotten—not people who were rare but people who were common.

Creation is a result—a place thinking may lead us. Before we can know how to create, we must know how to think.

Evaluation directs iteration.

Invention is incremental—a series of slight and constant changes.

What the human race created was creation itself. The ability to change anything was the change that changed everything.

Minds do not leap. Observation, evaluation, and iteration, not sudden shifts of perception, solve problems and lead us to creation.

Creation is so around and inside us that we cannot look without seeing it or listen without hearing it. As a result, we do not notice it at all. We live in symbiosis with new.