How To Solve A Problem Quotes & Sayings

I made a lot of changes in my life between my twenties and thirties, and it all sort of revolves around how I think people with nerdier brains tend to problem-solve and approach things differently then "norms." — Chris Hardwick

June 16th NO SHAME IN NEEDING HELP "Don't be ashamed of needing help. You have a duty to fulfill just like a soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you are injured and can't climb up without another soldier's help?" - MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.7 No one ever said you were born with all the tools you'd need to solve every problem you'd face in life. In fact, as a newborn you were practically helpless. Someone helped you then, and you came to understand that you could ask for that help. It was how you knew you were loved. Well, you are still loved. You can ask anyone for help. You don't have to face everything on your own. If you need help, comrade, just ask. — Ryan Holiday

Politics is a kind of problem solving. No matter what organizational challenge you face, and how frustrating it might be, it's just another kind of problem to solve. — Scott Berkun

Try to distill the character of your subject. Understand how he moves, thinks, acts. It's difficult to put into words. Consider each drawing as a problem that did not exist before, and then try to solve that problem to the best of your ability. That i what caricature is all about — Al Hirschfeld

We've poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit.. and we go on gobbling them up. It's hard to imagine how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody's really doing anything about it. It's a problem our children will have to solve, or their children. — Daniel Quinn

Consider a cow. A cow doesn't have the problem-solving skill of a chimpanzee, which has discovered how to get termites out of the ground by putting a stick into a hole. Evolution has developed the brain's ability to solve puzzles, and at the same time has produced in our brain a pleasure of solving problems. — Martin Gardner

Storytelling is the difference between solving a problem and creating a cause. Lists solve a problem: Here's an issue we face, let's create a pro and con list about how to solve it and then pick the best option. A cause is something that ignites people and unites people. That is what a good story does: It creates a cause. — Jeanne Liedtka

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I do believe that in order to be a successful negotiator that as a diplomat, you have to be able to put yourself into the other person's shoes. Unless you can understand what is motivating them, you are never going to be able to figure out how to solve a particular problem. — Madeleine Albright

You have to ask good questions. "What can I do to improve?" or "How can I find a better job?" or "How can I be grateful that I lost this job?" Because inside of every problem is the seed of a "difficult gratitude problem" and it always improves your life to solve those problems. — James Altucher

The book Dynamic Programming by Richard Bellman is an important, pioneering work in which a group of problems is collected together at the end of some chapters under the heading "Exercises and Research Problems," with extremely trivial questions appearing in the midst of deep, unsolved problems. It is rumored that someone once asked Dr. Bellman how to tell the exercises apart from the research problems, and he replied: "If you can solve it, it is an exercise; otherwise it's a research problem." — Donald Knuth

The first is about problem solving generally. Kobayashi redefined the problem he was trying to solve. What question were his competitors asking? It was essentially: How do I eat more hot dogs? Kobayashi asked a different question: How do I make hot dogs easier to eat? This question led him to experiment and gather the feedback that changed the game. Only by redefining the problem was he able to discover a new set of solutions. — Anonymous

You're familiar with the P = NP problem, right?" Yukawa asked from behind him. Ishigami looked around. "You're referring to the question of whether or not it is as easy to determine the accuracy of another person's results as it is to solve the problem yourself - or, failing that, how the difference in difficulty compares. It's one of the questions the Clay Mathematics Institute has offered a prize to solve. — Keigo Higashino

To solve a problem, change your awareness, perception, and consciousness about the problem. — Debasish Mridha

As I've often said, this is the biggest problem we have in our society - unwanted kids. If we solve this problem we solve all the other problems. So we have to start judging. As I said before, we judge smokers more harshly than we judge deadbeat dads in our current society. Seriously, how many antismoking PSAs have you seen this week vs. ones saying raise your kids, or don't have kids if you can't afford them? And what's hurting our society more? People need to see that asshole and call him an asshole so maybe other people thinking about being assholes wouldn't become assholes. We stopped judging people a long time ago because the idiots on the left told us everyone is the same and that we couldn't do that. We need to bring back judging. — Adam Carolla

I took a computer-science course to fill a prerequisite at Stanford, and I realized that every day was a new problem, and every day you got to think about how to solve something new, how to reason through something new, how to develop an algorithm to solve for something you hadn't worked on before. — Marissa Mayer

For example, people who don't know how to drive may nevertheless want to drive their car. But society feels that it is better if they don't, because of what it means for the rest of us. A free market in driver's licenses obviously cannot solve this problem. — Abhijit V. Banerjee

The equation of animal and vegetable life is too complicated a problem for human intelligence to solve, and we can never know how wide a circle of disturbance we produce in the harmonies of nature when we throw the smallest pebble into the ocean of organic life. — George Perkins Marsh

Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own characteristic qualities. — Emma Goldman

There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far bank. It is a simple bridging problem, a problem of knocking together a bridge. People solve such problems every day. They solve them, and having solved them push on.
Let us assume that, however it may have been done, it is done. Let us take it that the bridge is built andcrossed, that we can put it out of our mind. We have left behind the territory in which we were. We are inthe far territory; where we want to be. — J.M. Coetzee

Internalizing problem-solving techniques enhances the neural activity that allows you to more easily hear the whispers of your growing intuition. When you know - really know - how to solve a problem just by looking at it, you've created a commanding chunk that sweeps like a song through your mind. — Barbara Oakley

No one will help you when you are left with problems. so plan how to face the crucial situations alone. God doesn't give a problem which you cant solve. — Mohd Riyaz Ali

Mental illness

People assume you aren't sick
unless they see the sickness on your skin
like scars forming a map of all the ways you're hurting.

My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s
Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better?
Have you tried not being sad, not being sick?
Have you tried being more like me?
Have you tried shutting up?

Yes, I have tried. Yes, I am still trying,
and yes, I am still sick.

Sometimes monsters are invisible, and
sometimes demons attack you from the inside.
Just because you cannot see the claws and the teeth
does not mean they aren't ripping through me.
Pain does not need to be seen to be felt.

Telling me there is no problem
won't solve the problem.

This is not how miracles are born.
This is not how sickness works. — Emm Roy

We have to remember that not every action taken to solve a problem will be free of unforeseen consequences. No matter how good our intentions. — Rachel Fischer

I'm trying to think about what I can do. But instead all that comes to mind are the things I can't do. How do we judge truth and goodness? Where are justice and righteousness hiding? A society that is violent or corrupt prohibits mutual communication. A society that fears communication is unable to solve any problem. It looks for someone to shift the responsibility to and turns even more violent. — Kyung-Sook Shin

When all you know is how to use a hammer, you think hitting should solve every problem. — Nana Awere Damoah

Obviously, it's a big problem how do we provide quality care to the maximum number of people. And it's not an easy problem to solve. — Dick Cheney

When you attack a problem as though it were solvable, even though you don't know how to solve it, you will be shocked with what you come up with. It's 100 times more worth it. It's never 100 times harder. — Astro Teller

I need to solve the problem. It's no different from how am I going to get my son out the door when he needs to go to school. It's a bigger version of that same type of problem. — Anne Wojcicki

We can kill all of the terrorist, but that will not solve the problem of terrorism. By reducing or eliminating fundamentalism we may be able to reduce terrorism. Open your eyes and look at the world. Fundamentalism is a prison for the human mind where no free thinking can be done. In that prison, the mind will stagnate and degenerate. The mind works in a very different way. It wants to get out. When that imprisoned mind can't get out, it becomes more fundamentalist and it wants to take revenge. Terrorism is the weapon of fundamentalism. — Debasish Mridha

And yet, it's the last place on earth the average person will turn to for help. You know why? You know why people don't automatically turn their own vast mental resources on when faced with a problem? It's because they never learned how to think. Most people will go to any length to avoid thinking when they're faced with a problem. They will ask advice from the most illogical people, usually people who don't know any more than they do: next-door neighbors, members of their families, and friends stuck in the same mental traps that they are. Very few of them use the muscles of their mind to solve their problems. — Earl Nightingale

By using two elephants to do the job, damage will occur just because of how large, lumbering, and unsubtle elephants are. They squash the flowers in the process of entering the playground, they strew leftovers and garbage all over the place from the frequent snacks they must eat while balancing the seesaw, they wear out the seesaw faster, and so on. This is equivalent to a pattern of stress-related disease that will run through many of the subsequent chapters: it is hard to fix one major problem in the body without knocking something else out of balance (the very essence of allostasis spreading across systems throughout the body). Thus, you may be able to solve one bit of imbalance brought on during stress by using your elephants (your massive levels of various stress hormones), but such great quantities of those hormones can make a mess of something else in the process. And a long history of doing this produces wear and tear throughout the body, termed allostatic load. — Robert M. Sapolsky

I want our people to beware that no matter how good the promise is - it is not to be carried out. The only thing I say again that will make America safe is to: Let the Black man and woman go into a state or territory of our own, and help us in that territory for the next 20 to 25 years until we are able to go for self. This will solve the problem between Black and White. And Allah (God) promises that America will get an extension of time and the Wrath of God will be turned aside from this nation. — Louis Farrakhan

Then why are you crying?"
"Because of you!" I beat my fists on his chest. "Because I love you, and I don't know what to do! I can solve almost any problem, but I can't solve this. I don't know how to deal with that. And I'm afraid! Afraid for you! Do you know what it'd do to me if something happens to you?" I stopped hitting him and clasped my hands over my own chest, as though there was a danger my heart might fall out. "This! This would break. Shatter. Crumble. Crumble until it was dust." I dropped my hands. "Blown away on the wind until there was nothing left. — Richelle Mead

But some will be happy with whatever comes their way, and others won't be satisfied with anything. And there's always a few who are only looking to take advantage. So when my friends talk about how best to fix the world, it all sounds so naive. As though there could be one solution that would solve every man's problem, turn us into innocents in the Garden of Eden. When in truth we will always have our lesser natures. — Helene Wecker

As Cook says, "Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer's problem."4 — Eric Ries

Most people will solve the problems they know how to solve. Roughly speaking they will solve B+ problems instead of A+ problems. A+ problems are high impact problems for your company but they're difficult problems. — Keith Rabois

Programmers are isolated. They sit in their cubicle; they don't think about the larger picture. To my mind, a programmer is not an engineer, because an engineer is somebody who starts with a social problem that an organization or a society has and says, "OK, here's this problem that we have- how can we solve it?" The engineer comes up with a clever, cost-effective solution to address that problem, builds it, tests it to make sure it solves the problem. That's engineering. — Philip Greenspun

My passions were an intersection between peace in the Middle East and climate change. I know how to understand a technology problem, break it into its components and solve it. I also knew I couldn't make peace solely through technological inventions. — Shai Agassi

There is a place for analysis, but it is apt to be quite fatal in prayer and meditation. Do not dissect the love of God, but feel it. Do not dissect divine intelligence, but realize it. Do not wonder how God can possibly solve this problem, but just watch Him do it in His own way-and He will if you will give Him a chance. You know that God is Love. So go ahead on that, and do not get theoretical about it. — Emmet Fox

The precondition for solving a problem is having a clear idea on how to
solve it. — Eraldo Banovac

No matter how limited their powers of reason might have been. still they must have understood that living like that was just murder, a capital crime - except it was slow, day-by-day murder. The government (or humanity) could not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the murder of millions a little at a time. To kill one man - that is, to subtract 50 years from the sum of all human lives - that was a crime; but to subtract from the sum of all human lives 50,000,000 years - that was not a crime! No, really, isn't it funny? This problem in moral math could be solved in half a minute by any ten-year-old Number today, but they couldn't solve it. All their Kant's together couldn't solve it (because it never occurred to one of their Kant's to construct a system of scientific ethics - that is, one based on subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication). — Yevgeny Zamyatin

The real questions are: Does it solve a problem? Is it serviceable? How is it going to look in ten years? — Charles Eames

If you cannot always elicit a straight answer from the unconscious brain, how can you access its knowledge? Sometimes the trick is merely to probe what your gut is telling you. So the next time a friend laments that she cannot decide between two options, tell her the easiest way to solve her problem: flip a coin. She should specify which option belongs to heads and which to tails, and then let the coin fly. The important part is to assess her gut feeling after the coin lands. If she feels a subtle sense of relief at being "told" what to do by the coin, that's the right choice for her. If, instead, she concludes that it's ludicrous for her to make a decision based on a coin toss, that will cue her to choose the other option. — David Eagleman

You have to realize: OK, I don't know how to solve a political problem, I don't know how to solve the pollution problem ... all I know is in my own life, I need to figure out some sense of purpose, I need to figure out how to be happy ... and I'm willing. — Jewel

Your job as an EntreLeader is to make sure when your team member leaves your office they take their monkey with them. The first step is to give them some ideas for options and instruct them to come back with three good ways to solve the problem and a suggested course of action. The next step is to teach your team to come to your office with a problem only after they have found three or more possible solutions and a suggested course of action. That makes for some great discussions and teachable moments as you show them how you would make the call. After solving problems and making the call with your help several times, the best team members begin to see the pattern you use and can do what you do. The final step is very personally rewarding. — Dave Ramsey

Sex, after all, is about being separate and joined at the same time. The fact that men tend to emphasize the former and women the latter is not an irreducible fact of gender, but the result of asymmetries in childrearing and socialization. But more than that, such tensions reflect the fact that in our society as a whole we don't know how to be involved with one another without feeling burdened or selfishly indulgent without feeling guilty. If we can solve this problem on a societal level, it will go a long way to solving it in the bedroom. — Michael J. Bader

How many times have you heard a person in a workplace say, "I wasn't trained for this!" That's an impossible reaction from a physicist, who would say, instead, "Cool. A problem I've never seen before. Let's see how I can figure out how to solve it!". — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

A good problem is something you don't know how to solve. That's what makes it a good puzzle and a good opportunity. — Paul Lockhart

We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race - we are even developing an exact ethic for extra-human relations. But all moral problems can be illustrated by one misquotation: 'Greater love hath no man than a mother cat dying to defend her kittens.' Once you understand the problem facing that cat and how she solved it, you will then be ready to examine yourself and learn how high up the moral ladder you are capable of climbing. — Robert A. Heinlein

My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything? — Duke Ellington

The problem of race is deep and wide and requires seismic change. But if we look to government to solve it, we might as well feel hopeless. If we look corporate America to solve it, we'll be waiting a long, long time. And if we agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates, who tentatively suggests that "the only work that will matter, will be the work done by us," then we will truly despair, for we know how well that has worked. If we follow that track, we'll quickly add in disbelief, as he did, "Or perhaps not."

As I've said, the problem of race is not "out there." It's "in here," in the human heart. And though there is no task in heaven or on earth more difficult than changing the human heart,I believe in the one who can do it. It requires a supernatural solution.

Yes, I believe in God. You see, I know how God can change a person's heart. — Benjamin Watson

We live in a world filled with evil and moral confusion. There is only one way out: affirmation of a God Whose primary demand of us is that we treat our fellow human beings decently. Faith in any god who makes any other primary demand will ultimately fail to solve the problem of evil. And any moral system that is detached from God, no matter how noble and sincerely held, will likewise fail. — Dennis Prager

A practical problem can only be solved by action itself. When your practical problem is how to earn a living, a book on how to make friends and influence people cannot solve it, though it may suggest things to do. Nothing short of the doing solves the problem. It is solved only by earning a living. — Mortimer J. Adler

You can't solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and [the problem's] past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it. — Mao Zedong

I think what's happened, Marlee, is that you've realized the world isn't an addition problem. We tell kids that sometimes. We pretend the world is straightforward, simple, easy. You do this, you get that. You're a good person and try your best, and nothing bad will happen. But the truth is, the world is much more like an algebraic equation. With variables and changes, complicated and messy. Sometimes there's more than one answer, and sometimes there is none. Sometimes we don't even know how to solve the problem. But usually, if we take things step by step, we can figure things out. You just have to remember to factor the equation, break it down into smaller parts. — Kristin Levine

Any high school boy or girl knows how to calculate the force with which a stone he or she throws will hit someone in the face, but nothing in those equations they use will tell them whether or not to throw it ... To solve the problem of values we must know what is valuable. Consciousness is the most valuable commodity ... To bring values into science, we need to connect science with what is valuable consciousness. — Ravi Gomatam

Nobody was ever hiring me just because I knew how to write code, they're hiring us to solve a problem that exists in their business. The coding was the medium to get to that goal, when I focused on the goal rather than the skill it made it easier to justify my services as an investment. — Liam Veitch

Components are how people solve problems above a modest scale; it's one thing that separates us from chimpanzees. We invented a way of solving problems by simply making it the other guy's problem. It's called specialization of labor, and it's as simple as that. That's how the humans differ from chimpanzees: they never invented that. They know how to make tools, they have a language, so for most of the obvious things there are no differences between chimps and humans. We discovered how to solve problems by making it the other guy's problem - through an economic system. — Brad Cox

Come now, gentlemen." Ashton's steely tone stopped the two men. "Do we need to solve this in a ring?"
"I wouldn't recommend that," Godric said with a wry grin. "But if it does come to it, I'll stake ten pounds on Charles."
Both Cedric and Charles shared cautious looks with one another before declining, perhaps in part because none of the others would take that bet. Ashton dropped his hand when he seemed satisfied that Cedric would not resume trying to kill Charles. Lucien gave a sigh of relief. He had no desire to jump between his friends. Charles was a champion boxer and Lucien didn't want a blackened eye simply because he'd try to impose peace. If Ashton wished to risk his face, that was entirely up to him.
Jonathan, who had lingered at the edge of the group, suddenly spoke up. "Is this how all of your League meetings go? Perhaps we might focus ourselves back on the real problem and the importance of protecting the ladies."

-His Wicked Seduction — Lauren Smith

Donald Saari uses a combination of stories and questions to challenge students to think critically about calculus. "When I finish this process," he explained, "I want the students to feel like they have invented calculus and that only some accident of birth kept them from beating Newton to the punch." In essence, he provokes them into inventing ways to find the area under the curve, breaking the process into the smallest concepts (not steps) and raising the questions that will Socratically pull them through the most difficult moments. Unlike so many in his discipline, he does not simply perform calculus in front of the students; rather, he raises the questions that will help them reason through the process, to see the nature of the questions and to think about how to answer them. "I want my students to construct their own understanding," he explains, "so they can tell a story about how to solve the problem. — Ken Bain

[Descartes] And so it was he who discovered the gulf between the subjective or ideal and the objective or real. He clothed this insight in the form of a doubt concerning the existence of the external world; but by his inadequate solution of such doubt, namely that God Almighty would surely not deceive us, he has shown how profound the problem is and how difficult it is to solve. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized religion brings two other important benefits to centralized societies. First, shared ideology or religion helps solve the problem of how unrelated individuals are to live together without killing each other - by providing them with a bond not based on kinship. Second, it gives people a motive, other than genetic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others. — Jared Diamond

The sudden hunch, the creative leap of mind that "sees" in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence. — Martin Gardner

The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance - almost is the revelation of ignorance. Our knowledge of the world instructs us first of all that the world is greater than our knowledge of it. To those who rejoice in the abundance and intricacy in Creation, this is a source of joy, as it is to those who rejoice in freedom ...
To those would-be solvers of "the human problem," who hope for knowledge equal to (capable of controlling) the world, it is a source of unremitting defeat and bewilderment. The evidence is overwhelming that knowledge does not solve "the human problem." Indeed, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests - with Genesis - that knowledge is the problem. Or perhaps we should say instead that all our problems tend to gather under two questions about knowledge: Having the ability and desire to know, how and what should we learn? And, having learned, how and for what should we use what we know? (pg. 183, People, Land, and Community) — Wendell Berry

Intelligence isn't just about how many levels of math courses you've taken, how fast you can solve an algorithm, or how many vocabulary words you know that are over 6 characters. It's about being able to approach a new problem, recognize its important components, and solve it - then take that knowledge gained and put it towards solving the next, more complex problem. It's about innovation and imagination, and about being able to put that to use to make the world a better place. This is the kind of intelligence that is valuable, and this is the type of intelligence we should be striving for and encouraging. — Andrea Kuszewsk

Business leaders, labor unions, governors, mayors, congressmen and presidents have all complained about a lack of funding for years, but aside from a one-time cash infusion from the stimulus program, nothing much has changed. There is still no consensus on how to solve the problem or where to get the massive amounts of money needed to fix it, just another example of political paralysis in Washington. — Steve Kroft

In response to my question about how we might rein in the empire, he said, That's why I'm meeting with you. Only you in the United States can change it. Your government created this problem and your people must solve it. You've got to insist that Washington honor its commitment to democracy, even when deomcratically elected leaders nationalize your corrupting corporations. You must take control of your corporations and your government. The people of the United States have a great deal of power. You need to come to grips with this. There's no alternative. We in Brazil have our hands tied. So do the Venezeulans. And the Nigerians. It's up to you. — John Perkins

It's amazing how a strip of sticky plastic will make my kids' pain vanish. Lucas will be howling about a stepped-on finger, but as soon as the SpongeBob Band-Aid touches his pinkie, he's all smiles. My sons are so convinced of the magical healing powers of Band-Aids, they think they can solve almost any problem. A couple of years ago, when out Sony TV blew a fuse, Jasper stuck a Band-Aid on the screen hoping to revive it. — A. J. Jacobs

If you are building a habit-forming product, write down the answers to these questions: What habits does your business model require? What problem are users turning to your product to solve? How do users currently solve that problem and why does it need a solution? How frequently do you expect users to engage with your product? What user behavior do you want to make into a habit? — Nir Eyal

The most calamitous failures of prediction usually have a lot in common. We focus on those signals that tell a story about the world as we would like it to be, not how it really is. We ignore the risks that are hardest to measure, even when they pose the greatest threats to our well-being. We make approximations and assumptions about the world that are much cruder than we realize. We abhor uncertainty, even when it is an irreducible part of the problem we are trying to solve. — Nate Silver

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. — Henry David Thoreau

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. — R. Buckminster Fuller

... as a convention, you get up and walk to the window to make the audience believe that you're looking out. It's for the audience, not for you! And what it means to you is something emotional [...] If you went to the Actors Studio you'd spend six months seeing the snow before you could say, 'Look at the snow.' This takes a terrible burden away from the actor, who thinks he's got to see the woods and the snow. 'Give me my gun! I see a rabbit! Give me my gun!' "

Meisner sounds thrilled at the possibility of a hunt.

"That happens when you're still sitting there reading. Then when they put in the scenery you move to the window. Isn't that simple? How simple it is to solve the problem of seeing things when you know that it's all in you emotionally, and that walking to the window is only a convention. — Sanford Meisner

If you just have a single problem to solve, then fine, go ahead and use a neural network. But if you want to do science and understand how to choose architectures, or how to go to a new problem, you have to understand what different architectures can and cannot do. — Marvin Minsky

The primary one among executives, she says, is an inability to rely on other people: when most executives face a massive challenge or stressor, they try to figure out how to solve the problem alone. — Shawn Achor

The church latched on to that old doctrine of original sin like a dog to a stick, and before you knew it, the whole gospel got twisted around it. Instead of being God's big message of saving love for the whole world, the gospel became a little bit of secret information on how to solve the pesky legal problem of original sin. — Brian D. McLaren

I think there are dozens or hundreds of different forms of creativity. Pondering science and math problems for years is different from improvising jazz. Something which seems to me remarkable is how unconscious the creative process is. You encounter a problem, but can't solve it. — Oliver Sacks

Usually my 'a-ha' moments are when I'm not trying to think of how to solve a particular problem. — Tony Hsieh

There are three things you must remember about a woman. Never take her for granted. Never think you know what she is thinking. And never think you know what she will do in a given situation. A woman is like smoke. She will curl seductively around you one moment, burn your eyes the next, tickle your throat until you cough, and then poof! She is gone. She is a mirage. She is a thunderstorm. She is a sailboat on a sunny mirrored lake. She will run when you reach for her, and come to you when you wish her away. You can solve a problem. You can analyze logic. You can explain how vapor turns into water. But you cannot understand the mind of a woman. And do you know why? Because she does not understand herself."
"Then what do you do?"
"You love her and deal with her in all honesty. You earn her trust. And then you trust the Almighty, who made women the way they are, believing that He knew what He was doing."
"What if that doesn't help?"
"Blame Him. — Elaine Coffman

Methods are more important than facts. The educational value of a problem given to a student depends mostly on how often the thought processes that are invoked to solve it will be helpful in later situations. It has little to do with how useful the answer to the problem may be. On the other hand, a good problem must also motivate the students; they should be interested in seeing the answer. Since students differ so greatly, I cannot expect everyone to like the problems that please me. — Donald Knuth

What a pity human beings can't exchange problems. Everyone knows exactly how to solve the other fellow's. — Olin Miller

Cities are never random.
No matter how chaotic they might seem, everything about them grows out of a need to solve a problem. In fact, a city is nothing more than a solution to a problem, that in turn creates more problems that need more solutions, until towers rise, roads widen, bridges are built, and millions of people are caught up in a mad race to feed the problem-solving, problem-creating frenzy. — Neal Shusterman

Walk down a hallway, end up in a ballroom, double glass doors to a subway station, third exit on the left goes to a hardware store that sells only hammers. No screwdrivers, no chisels, not even any nails - just hammers. You'd be surprised how many problems you can solve with a hammer if you really put your mind to it. — Stefan Gagne

Mr. Lawrence drank from his beer. Do you know how I figure out what to do? I look under rocks for slime. I lick the slime with my own tongue. I see the problem for what it is, not what a consultant's methodology says it should be. I find people who are working on something that no one told them to work on, who solve a problem because they can't let it stay unsolved, who don't eat or bathe because it takes too much time. I find the ones selling their ideas to customers without going through the marketing department first. I've gotten good at picking molds off cheeses and turning them into penicillin. People used to wonder where my ideas came from. It was simple: I looked for slimy rocks and moldy cheese, and I watched the bank account like a hawk. It worked well for this company for a long time. — Charlie Close

[Doubt] is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas bought in - a trial-and-error system. This method was a result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture at the end of the eighteenth century. Even then it was clear to socially minded people that the openness of possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar ... doubt is not to be feared, but welcomed and discussed. — Richard Feynman

Society, and the family as its psycho social agent, has to solve a difficult problem: How to break a person's will without his being aware of it? Yet by a complicated process of indoctrination, rewards, punishments, and fitting ideology, it solves this task by and large so well that most people believe they are following their own will and are unaware that their will itself is conditioned and manipulated. — Erich Fromm

How hard is it to build an intelligent machine? I don't think it's so hard, but that's my opinion, and I've written two books on how I think one should do it. The basic idea I promote is that you mustn't look for a magic bullet. You mustn't look for one wonderful way to solve all problems. Instead you want to look for 20 or 30 ways to solve different kinds of problems. And to build some kind of higher administrative device that figures out what kind of problem you have and what method to use. — Marvin Minsky

Violence is a problem we all want to solve. I want to make sure that kids learn to deal with anger by learning how to talk with people to solve problems. Here in the United States Senate I want to make sure we have safe schools, safe neighborhoods and good things for kids to do after school! — Patty Murray