Featured Articles
Osborn's Revolutionary Ideas on Education Prove Success
"When the schools reopen in the Fall, the textbook (Applied Imagination) will be in use on about 300 campuses. Three editions, totaling 30,000 copies, have been printed… One of the major successes of Mr. Osborn’s educational revolution is the decision of the Air Force to use the Osborn text in its ROTC."
"General Electric, which has had a course in creative engineering for 16 years, now uses the Osborn textbook and recently stated: ‘Results have been excellent. After graduation, the men who have attended the course continue to develop new processes and patentable ideas at an average rate almost three times that of non-graduates.’"
Osborn's New Book Is Revelation of Amazing Versatility & Imagination (Wake Up Your Mind)
"1-- Every problem, personal or otherwise, is a creative challenge.
2-- By attacking our problems imaginatively, we can best solve them.
3-- By this and other such exercise we can help keep our creativity from growing weaker, and can even build it ever stronger-- all the way through life."
"The more creative we try to be, the more creative we become; and the more creative we are, the more we can get out of life."
"Mr Osborn was asked by a magazine editor to define his hobby, and promptly answered: 'Imagination.'"
"The one overshadowing reason why we should keep ourselves creatively alert is that in this way we can make ourselves more worthwhile to ourselves as well as to others. The fact is that the lamp which lit the world (imagination) can light our lives."
- Alex Osborn
Forced Thinking Pays Dividends, Author Declares
"Imagination can be developed like a muscle and you can learn how to get ideas just as you can learn how to swim."- Alex Osborn
"(Osborn) lost more than 20 pounds while preparing the script for Wake Up Your Mind...It took him ten long years of strenuous pondering to get together the material for Your Creative Power… Osborn rises almost every morning long before dawn, shuts himself in an attic room with at least three doors between himself and the rest of the family and with strict orders not to be disturbed unless the house is one fire."
"When you read my books, the words seem to have come easy… But I know different. They came very hard. I’ve got to push and poke myself or I would never get anything on paper. Those two or three hours take a lot out of me each morning. The day’s work in the office is a cinch in comparison."- Alex Osborn
That Alex Osborn was a “big-shot” (though a reluctant one) is evidenced by his correspondence with such high-powered people as Henry Ford II, Earl Warren (Governor of California and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court), Richard Nixon (during his Vice Presidency to Lyndon B. Johnson), and President Herbert Hoover.
Take Pride in City's Blessings; It's A Great Place to Live, Work
"First, let me confess that I was born in New York City- that I came here intending to tarry only long enough to cut my reportorial eyeteeth, and then move on. But Buffalo won my heart, and I soon decided to make it my home for good."- Alex Osborn
Osborn, a native New Yorker, fell in love with the city of Buffalo, where he decided to settle and raise a family. Refusing to live in New York, he commuted to New York to work at BBDO during the week and returned to Buffalo on the weekends.
Alex F. Osborn Appointed to National Inventor's Council
"Brainstorming" TIME Magazine
New York Times Obituary
"Alex F. Osborn...made 'creative thinking' and 'brainstorming' household words."
"Each of us has a creative mind that thinks up ideas and a judicial mind that criticizes them. The first trick is to keep these two minds from interfering with each other."
- Alex Osborn
Bugle Call Wedding March for Gallant Ad Man
Osborn served in Troop I Cavalry of the National Guard in 1913 and re-enlisted in 1917.
“Osborn received word that Troop I of the Buffalo National Guard would go to the front. Being a true American, he immediately flashed back word, “I’m with you.”
"Alex is engaged to be married… So, before starting for Mexico, he will pause long enough for the ceremony, which will make both himself and his sweetheart happy-- and their wedding march will be a bugle call."
Red Feather Award
Osborn received the Red Feather Award in 1951. The award was given annually to an outstanding volunteer leader for distinguished national service to the Community Chests (now the United Way).