Encourage many ideas from many sources.

Let a thousand flowers bloom is a common misquotation of Chairman Mao Zedong's "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend". This slogan was used during the period of approximately six weeks in the summer of 1957 when the Chinese intelligentsia were invited to criticize the political system then obtaining in Communist China.

It is sometimes suggested that the initiative was a deliberate attempt to flush out dissidents by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of the regime. Whether or not it was a deliberate trap isn't clear but it is the case that many of those who put forward views that were unwelcome to Mao were executed.