153 Problem solving Quotes

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

An idea is salvation by imagination.

Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places.

A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.

Don't find fault, find a remedy.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

If something seems possible, that's probably because someone is already doing it. When something seems that it can't possibly work, nobody tries it. Real innovation happens when someone tries anyway, overlooking an obvious flaw, and finds a way to make an idea work.

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.

Never cut what you can untie.

Veronica solves little puzzles because she, like all of us, cannot unravel the bigger ones.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

In other words, the real problem is not exterior. The real problem is interior. The real problem is how to get people to internally transform, from egocentric to sociocentric to worldcentric consciousness, which is the only stance that can grasp the global dimensions of the problem in the first place, and thus the only stance that can freely, even eagerly, embrace global solutions.

There's often more than one correct thing. There's often more than one right thing. There's often more than one obvious thing.

And in the limiting case where the optimizer is completely broken because it's not implemented yet, we get to work around that too. Optionally...

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away.

It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.

We venture to make the assertion that there is but one sin: IGNORANCE, and but one salvation: APPLIED KNOWLEDGE.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

I don't think most people associate me with leeches or how to get them off. But I know how to get them off. I'm an expert at it.

You feed yourself. Make sure you have all the information, whether it's aesthetic, scientific, mathematical, I don't care what it is. Then you walk away from it and let it ferment. You ignore it and pretend you don't care. Next thing you know, the answer comes.

As you know, the best way to solve a problem is to identify the core belief that causes the problem; then mock that belief until the people who hold it insist that you heard them wrong.

If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.

I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme positions lies somewhere between them. More fruitful perspectives often require that we step off the line to a site outside the dichotomy.

There is a similarity between juggling and composing on the typewriter. The trick is, when you spill something, make it look like a part of the act.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.

Don't argue about the difficulties. The difficulties will argue for themselves.

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.

Don't spend your precious time asking 'Why isn't the world a better place?' It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is 'How can I make it better?' To that there is an answer.

The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. ... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.

Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.

Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt; Nothing's so hard but search will find it out.

When you confront a problem, you begin to solve it.

Our garden was debated territory between five local cats, and we'd heard that the best way to keep other cats out of the garden was to have one yourself. A moment's rational thought here will spot the slight flaw in this reasoning.

'Because thought has by now been perverted into the solving of assigned problems, even what is not assigned is processed like a problem.'

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

I think now that the great thing is not so much the formulation of an answer for myself, for the theater, or the play - but rather the most accurate possible statement of the problem.

If you can't go around it, over it, or through it, you'd better negotiate with it.

I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public. My experience is that people who call themselves 'The Intellectuals' understand theories, but they do not understand things. I have long been convinced that, if these men could have gone into the South and taken up and become interested in some practical work which would have brought them in touch with people and things, the whole world would have looked very different to them. Bad as conditions might have seemed at first, when they saw that actual progress was being made, they would have taken a more hopeful view of the situation.

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from tackling the matter at hand.

'personally i prefer the MX RR and a stylized name, but i was trying to solve the problem rather than create an industry.' (2004)

Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.

I happen to be a kind of inquisitive guy and when I see things I don't like, I start thinking why do they have to be like this and how can I improve them?

Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm - which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commerical fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.

I had made up my mind to find that for which I was searching even if it required the remainder of my life. After innumerable failures I finally uncovered the principle for which I was searching, and I was astounded at its simplicity. I was still more astounded to discover the principle I had revealed not only beneficial in the construction of a mechanical hearing aid but it served as well as means of sending the sound of the voice over a wire. Another discovery which came out of my investigation was the fact that when a man gives his order to produce a definite result and stands by that order it seems to have the effect of giving him what might be termed a second sight which enables him to see right through ordinary problems. What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

Think off-center.

It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. There are people, particularly dumb people, who are in terrible trouble and never get out of it, because they're not intelligent enough. It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry - or laugh.

If you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail.

Y'see, when you start to lick a national problem you have to go after the fundamentables. You want to cut down air pollution? Cut down the original source... Breathin! ~ Churchy to Howland

Life is neither a feast nor a spectacle, but a predicament.

If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse.

Problems cannot be solved by the level of awareness that created them.

I'm a hacker at heart and I like finding different ways of doing things because in doing so, I find new ways of examining the job at hand.

Here was a problem, that I, a ten year old, could understand and I knew from that moment that I would never let it go. I had to solve it.

Maybe I was just around a lot of people that cried, and I saw that it accomplished nothing.

There is always a way-if you're committed.

The right method in any particular case must be largely determined by the nature of the problem.

Wonderful! You have some of my favourite problems!

If we can see our difficulties, there is a way of resolving them, or the hope of a way.

We actually got smart and bought sticky velcro and put on either side of the candles, so they wouldn't roll around' after mike said how dangerous, but necessary it is to drive around with scented candles lit in the bus.

Dave always arrives at the right conclusions, but his mathematics is terrible. I take it home and find all sorts of errors and then have to spend the night trying to develop the correct proof. But in the end, the result is always exactly the same as the one Dave saw directly.

He was simply unable to let things be foggy. Since they always are, this kept him pretty active.

When faced with a mountain, I will not quit! I will keep on striving until I climb over, find a pass through, tunnel underneath - or simply stay and turn the mountain into a gold mine, with God's help!

Europe is beginning to be enamored of the creed of Muhammad. In the next century I may go still further in recognizing the utility of that creed in solving its problems, and it is in this sense that you must understand my prediction.[8]

Interestingly enough, Americans now understand we have a problem. - April 26, 2005 [65]

What I intend to do is lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong.... I think one of the things that people want us to do here is to play a blame game. We've got to solve problems. We're problem-solvers. There will be ample time for people to figure out what went right and what went wrong. What I'm interested in is helping save lives. That's what I want to do.

The difficulties he foresaw were so formidable that he quickly banished the disagreeable subject from his mind.

The Quakers have an excellent approach to thinking through difficult problems, where a number of intelligent and responsible people must work together. They meet as equals, and anyone who has an idea speaks up. There are no parliamentary procedures and no coercion from the Chair. They continue the discussion until unanimity is reached. I want you guys to do that. Get in a room with no phones and leave orders that you are not to be disturbed. And sit there until you can deal with each other as individuals, not as spokesmen for either organization.

At any moment during a twenty-four-hour day, only one-third of the people in the world are asleep. The other two-thirds are awake and creating problems.

The Golden Gate wasn't our fault either, but we still put a bridge across it.

Executives who get there and stay suggest solutions when they present the problems.

The problems is mastered - insupportably tiring when it was impending. Deliverance accounts for what sounds like axiom. The Gordian knot need not be cut.

'To release four hands' is used when you and the enemy are contending with the same spirit, and the issue cannot be decided. Abandon this spirit and win through an alternative resource. In large-scale strategy, when there is a 'four hands' spirit, do not give up - it is man's existence. Immediately throw away this spirit and win with a technique the enemy does not expect.

The 'mountain-sea' spirit means that it is bad to repeat the same thing several times when fighting the enemy. There may be no help but to do something twice, but do not try it a third time. If you once make an attack and fail, there is little chance of success if you use the same approach again.

Doesn't it occur to you that the very fact that you're asking me this question tells me there's something else for me to figure out, and therefore greatly increases the chance that I will figure it out?

If you try to solve a hard problem, the question is not whether you will use a powerful enough language, but whether you will (a) use a powerful language, (b) write a de facto interpreter for one, or (c) yourself become a human compiler for one.

I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.

The same equations have the same solutions. (Thus when you have solved a mathematical problem, you can re-use the solution in another physical situation. Feynman was skilled in transforming a problem into one that he could solve.)

When you are solving a problem, don't worry. Now, after you have solved the problem, then that's the time to worry.

The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm: (1) write down the problem; (2) think very hard; (3) write down the answer.

They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer - not an easy answer - but simple.

Rudy Giuliani is a problem solver with common sense leadership who made a tremendous and positive difference as Mayor of New York, impacting peoples' lives for the better.

Invoke Almighty God for, God willing, it will solve all difficulties.

The way to deal with an impossible task was to chop it down into a number of merely very difficult tasks, and break each one of them into a group of horribly hard tasks, and each of them into tricky jobs, and each of them...

'I do not advocate burning your ship to get rid of the cockroaches'.

Great problems call for many small solutions.

The problems we see today are going to be a hell of a lot worse in 10 years if we're not willing to face up to them.