Quotes & Sayings About Elegant Solutions

When you are working on a problem, you sometimes get so close to it that you can't see all the options. You miss elegant solutions because the creative part of your mind is suppressed by the intensity of your focus. Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to go home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed, and then wake up the next morning and take a shower. — Robert C. Martin

Engineering is not merely knowing and being knowledgeable, like a walking encyclopedia; engineering is not merely analysis; engineering is not merely the possession of the capacity to get elegant solutions to non-existent engineering problems; engineering is practicing the art of the organizing forces of technological change ... Engineers operate at the interface between science and society. — Gordon S. Brown

The direction of research . . .should be:
- toward non-violence rather than violence,
- towards a harmonious cooperation with nature rather than with warfare against nature;
- towards the noiseless, low-energy, elegant, and economical solutions normally applied in nature rather than [our often] noisy, high-energy, brutal, wasteful, and clumsy solutions. — E.F. Schumacher

Humankind's struggle against a hostile environment causes people throughout the ages to deploy their full armory of logic, training, strategy, imagination, inventiveness, and creativity. We are born with the natural ability to strategize. The most influential tool in humankind's intellectual tool kit is the ability to regenerate a sense of unruffled alertness, to establish a poised stance that leads to intuitive discoveries generated by the conscious and unconscious mind constantly filtering a plethora of data, selecting critical facts, and producing elegant solutions to seemingly insoluble dilemmas. — Kilroy J. Oldster

There are times when the marvels of scientific advancement expedite our processes, making our lives easier. Modern technology provides machines that can think three or five or seven steps ahead of the human mind, machines that offer elegant solutions, a selection of contingency plans, Bs and Cs and Ds in case A isn't to your liking.
And then there are times when a screwdriver and a bit of elbow grease are all that's necessary to get the job done. — Victoria Schwab

When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple, you don't really understand the complexity of the problem. Then you get into the problem, and you see that it's really complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That's sort of the middle, and that's where most people stop ... But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem - and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works. — Steve Jobs

Complexity has and will maintain a strong fascination for many people. It is true that we live in a complex world and strive to solve inherently complex problems, which often do require complex mechanisms. However, this should not diminish our desire for elegant solutions, which convince by their clarity and effectiveness. Simple, elegant solutions are more effective, but they are harder to find than complex ones, and they require more time, which we too often believe to be unaffordable — Niklaus Wirth

These examples, and those that surround us every day, are why creational thinking, not critical thinking, should be our ultimate goal in education. Critical thinking is a skill that allows us to steer a valuable course through a known problem. It engages a problem-solving skill set but stops short of what is possible. If problem solving and critical thinking are the goals of education, the bar is too low. Creational thinking, the use of content while branching into the unknown, leads to the possibility of truly elegant solutions. That is where the bar needs to be, particularly in light of the challenges that lie ahead for us. — Grant Lichtman

Once you get into the problem... you see that it's complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That's where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while. But the really great person will keep going, find the underlying problem, and come up with an elegant solution that works on every level. — George Beahm

Endings are lush and lascivious, Vince; they call to me. All spread out on satin inevitabilities, waiting, beckoning, promising impossibly, obscenely elegant solutions-if you've been a good lab and dressed the house just so, for its comfort, for its arousal. All the rest of the nonsense a story requires is must a long seduction of the ending. — Catherynne M Valente

No one could accuse Building 20 of burying its Services too deep in the Structure. Recabling from office to office, lab to lab, or even wing to wing is largely a matter of do-it-yourself. Rather than a burden, the occupants consider this a benefit. 1990 - The wide wood stairs in Building 20 show wear in a way that adds to its myth. You feel yourself walking in historic footsteps in pursuit of technical solutions that might be elegant precisely because they are quick and dirty. And that describes the building: elegant because it is quick and dirty. — Stewart Brand

I look at Google and think they have a strong academic culture. Elegant solutions to complex problems. — Mark Zuckerberg

It was an interesting thing to do. Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions. — Vladimir Nabokov

We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do. — Michael Foot

When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. — Steve Jobs

I wrote code that merely did what it was supposed to do. Simon's solutions were rapid and weird - convoluted, sometimes in a pointless way, often in a way that looked pointless until you saw how elegant it was. — Austin Grossman