Quotes About Problem-solving

Necessity is the mother of all invention.

I am not more gifted than anybody else. I am just more curious than the average person and I will not give up a problem until I have found the proper solution.

Logic will get you from point A to point B. Imagination and hard work will take you everywhere else.

If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.

The creative principle [of science] resides in mathematics.

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

no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap.

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

I used to think I had no will to power. Now I perceive that I vented it on thoughts, rather than people. Conquering an unknown province of knowledge. Getting the better of a problem. Forcing ideas to associate or come apart. Bullying recalcitrant words to assume a certain pattern. All the fun of being a dictator without any risks and responsibilities.

He would sit down and consider the situation carefully. Not only did this help to identify the solution to the problem, but it also gave him the opportunity to remind himself that things were not really as bad as they seemed; it was all a question of perspective. Sitting down and looking up at the sky for a few minutes--not at any particular part of the sky, but just at the sky in general--at the vast, dizzying, empty sky of Botswana, cut human problems down to size.

She stopped. It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.

The second flaw is that some activities, almost by definition, defy being broken down into steps.

If we're going to get this country out of its current energy situation, we can't just conserve our way out. We can't just drill our way out. We can't bomb our way out. We're going to do it the old-fashioned, American way. We're going to invent our way out, working together.

Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes.

The problem is that when you blame someone else for how you feel, you disempower yourself from finding solutions. If this is someone else's fault, only that person can fix it, right? So poor you can't do anything but sit there and moan. On

great scientists invented technologies to achieve their goals, but never failed to modify existing technologies to suit their needs whenever possible. Why reinvent the wheel when there was so much else that needed to be done?

The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all.

When competent, sensible people do something stupid, the smartest move is to try to figure out, first, what kept them from seeing it coming and, second, how to prevent the problem from happening again. Talking

Instead of being overwhelmed by the apparent uncertainty in such a problem, start to ask what things about it you do know.

It is a mark of maturity to deal with the problem rather than suppress it

At the very end, somebody took a dump right where I stood in the dugout every day. That was the low point. The grounds crew guy cleaned it up. He said, "Oh, I think it's dog crap." I said, "No it ain't. That's human crap."

There's no greater bliss in life than when the plumber eventually comes to unblock your drains. No writer can give that sort of pleasure.

Life is a mountain of solvable problems and I enjoy that.

Happy Monday! Don't victimize yourself and let life pass you by as you sit around and complain about problems. Be empowered and create solutions. You can!