Quotes & Sayings About Problem Solving

Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases. — Grant Morrison

The entire history of mankind is problem solving, or science fiction swallowing ideas, digesting them, and excreting formulas for survival. You can't have one without the other. No fantasy, no reality. No studies concerning loss, no gain. No imagination, no will. No impossible dreams: No possible solutions. — Ray Bradbury

I sure got their attention. That's always the first step to solving an ignored problem. — Randy Pausch

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

You are right to demand that an artist engage his work consciously, but you confuse two different things: solving the problem and correctly posing the question. — Anton Chekhov

Do you want to resolve a conflict successfully? Don't wait, start a conversation. — Eraldo Banovac

The group made the salesman aware in no uncertain terms that his tendency to avoid problem-solving by ignoring a problem in the hope that it would go away was in itself his major problem. — M. Scott Peck

Satisfaction involves an active pursuit- it is the emotional reward we get after adapting to a new situation or solving a novel problem. — Mark Andrews

By teaching tools and problem solving instead of memorization and by hiring only teachers with master's degrees, Finland created a higher educational platform that gave its kids an advantage. That's how its school system shot to number one.* — Shane Snow

As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor — Lois McMaster Bujold

This is something the Democrats have talked about, and a goal we share, getting everyone insured, and solving the issue in a Republican way, which is applying a personal responsibility principle (individual mandate), reforming the market (more strictly regulating the insurance companies), and allowing people to buy private health care insurance that they can take with them from job to job that's entirely affordable. So it's a Republican way of solving a problem that we face as a nation. — Mitt Romney

Don't manipulate, articulate! — Utpal Vaishnav

Those thinking Why, When, Where, Who are information providers; the one thinking "HOW" is the leader in solving the problem. — Vikrmn

I enjoyed biology in high school, and that brought me to a research lab at U.C. Santa Barbara. I loved doing experiments, and I had fun with them. I realized this kind of problem-solving fit my intellectual style. — Carol W. Greider

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

When the real problem is not well identified, only by chance a solution may be created. — Miguel Reynolds Brandao

Every problem has a solution; it may sometimes just need another perspective. — Katherine Russell

When things go wrong, just do your best to make it through the day and you'll be okay in a short time. — Auliq Ice

When there is conflict between us, we don't need to put our energy into fighting each other. We can combine forces to search for a solution that respects the needs of all parties. The child is an active participant in solving his problems. This will stand him in good stead in the years to come. — Joanna Faber

The person who causes a problem may be the best person to solve it. — Steven Redhead

A woman sees a problem and sets about solving it, not analyzing it. — Toni Sorenson

If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail. — Abraham H. Maslow

Genius is the act of solving a problem in a way no one has solved it before. — Seth Godin

I never see problems. I always see challenges. By definition, a problem is something unwelcome or harmful, whereas a challenge is a contest. Contests can be won; and, I love winning. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

The only reason you will get hired is because the person hiring you believes you can help them solve their problem. Stop thinking you're "filling an opening;" you're not. You're actually solving a company's problem, and by solving their problem, they will solve yours. — Mayowa O Ajisafe

the process of learning a theory depends upon the study of applications, including practice problem-solving both with a pencil and paper and with instruments in the laboratory. If, for example, the student of Newtonian dynamics ever discovers the meaning of terms like 'force,' 'mass,' 'space,' and 'time,' he does so less from the incomplete though sometimes helpful definitions in his text than by observing and participating in the application of these concepts to problem-solution. That — Thomas S. Kuhn

Making a movie is a lot of problem solving. — Gia Coppola

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

If your glass seems half empty, use a smaller glass. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving. — Edward De Bono

Each electron wants the whole of three-dimensional space for its waves; so Schrodinger generously allows three dimensions for each of them. For two electrons he requires a six-dimensional sub-aether. He then successfully applies his method on the same lines as before. I think you will see now that Schrodinger has given us what seemed to be a comprehensible physical picture only to snatch it away again. His sub-aether does not exist in physical space; it is in a 'configuration space' imagined by the mathematician for the purpose of solving his problems, and imagined afresh with different numbers of dimensions according to the problem proposed. It was only an accident that in the earliest problems considered the configuration space had a close correspondence with physical space, suggesting some degree of objective reality of the waves. Schrodinger's wave mechanics is not a physical theory but a dodge - and a very good dodge too. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

This is the hard part. Knowing and admitting a problem are not the same as solving it. But executing a solution is also the fun part, because the solution save you and gets you moving again. — Twyla Tharp

Look at your heart-flower and smile.
You will be able to solve your most pressing problems. — Sri Chinmoy

I know how to work a problem. Frustration is the enemy. It makes you do stupid things. So you don't let it beat you. Instead you search for landmarks, look for signs. The task takes every single bit of me I have left. It's good, this task, because it keeps my mind focused. — Carolyn Lee Adams

Diverse groups of problem solvers outperformed the groups of the best individuals at solving complex problems. The reason: the diverse groups got stuck less often than the smart individuals, who tended to think similarly. — Scott E. Page

Principle 4: Tackle your toughest challenge today. Burnout doesn't occur because we're solving problems; it occurs because we've been trying to solve the same problem over and over. The problem named is the problem solved. Identify and then confront the real obstacles in your path. Stay current with the people important to your success and happiness. Travel light, agenda-free. — Susan Scott

Play for young children is not recreation activity, It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity. Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met. — James L Hymes

Solving a real problem was much more meaningful than saving fictional souls from a fictional hell. — Dan Barker

Collective problems must be solved by all of us, collectively, and no one finds inner peace who avoids doing his or her share in the solving of collective problems. — Peace Pilgrim

It is difficult to distinguish deduction from what in other circumstances is called problem-solving. And concept learning, inference, and reasoning by analogy are all instances of inductive reasoning. (Detectives typically induce, rather than deduce.) None of these things can be done separately from each other, or from anything else. They are pseudo-categories. — Frank Smith

All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem. — William Zinsser

Solving problems is better than forgetting them otherwise you will be reminded of them at a bad time. — Auliq Ice

To me, it doesn't matter if your scapegoats are the Jews, the homosexuals, the male sex, the Masons, the Jesuits, the Welfare Parasites, the Power Elite, the female sex, the vegetarians, or the Communist Party. To the extent that you need a scapegoat, you simply have not got your brain programmed to work as an efficient problem-solving machine. — Robert Anton Wilson

The first step to problem solving is figuring out who's got the problem. — Gregory D. Brenneman

Science, in the very act of solving problems, creates more of them. — Abraham Flexner

Einstein said, "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence." Curiosity's reason for existing is not simply to be a tool used in acquiring knowledge; it reminds us that we're alive. Researchers are finding evidence that curiosity is correlated with creativity, intelligence, improved learning and memory, and problem solving. — Brene Brown

One of the reasons most people are not good at solving problems and manifesting or attracting into their life what they want is because their thoughts are always on what's wrong and on what's missing and on the problem. — Wayne Dyer

Let's acknowledge that men reach for opportunities more quickly and more easily than women. So often as managers, we give the job to whoever starts solving the problem, to whoever jumps in. Since we know men will jump in faster than women in so many circumstances, we have to slow down and encourage more women to sit at more tables. — Sheryl Sandberg

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

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

After a few months, I decided to do one more leg of the Le Noise tour and film the last show with Jonathan Demme in Toronto's Massey Hall/ It turned out to be a great night. Everyone was very happy because we had captured it. During a review of the digital files, we realized that the resolution was not full, it was a stepped down quality, not the best it could be. My own team's excuses were not adequate, because I was not informed of the decision to go to a lesser quality. Lesser quality is so accepted as normal now that even I had used it unknowingly. I went back to Massey Hall and set up a PA system like the one I used at the show, played back the mixes through the PA, and rerecorded the house sound at the highest resolution. I did the best I could with a bad situation. It does sound great now. Thankfully, the PA mix was only one step down from the highest resolution, so when it resonated in the hall and was rerecorded at the highest level, a high resolution hall sound was captured. — Neil Young

Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli — B.F. Skinner

Until there is a reversal of the sense of values which cares more for size and appearance than for quality, there will be no solving the problem of food pollution. — Masanobu Fukuoka

Technology isn't fulfilling its promise of unlimited progress and solving every problem through technology. With the Enlightenment and its aftermath, there already was a general loss of confidence in the Western religions. — Thomas Keating

What we're searching for will determine where we arrive, or if we arrive. And right in the middle of such risky choices, Christmas is God perfectly solving the problem by showing us what to search for and then bringing it to us. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

It's helpful to know that Eden drew his inspiration from a classic study led by the Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal, who teamed up with Lenore Jacobson, the principal of an elementary school in San Francisco. In eighteen different classrooms, students from kindergarten through fifth grade took a Harvard cognitive ability test. The test objectively measured students' verbal and reasoning skills, which are known to be critical to learning and problem solving. Rosenthal and Jacobson shared the test results with the teachers: approximately 20 percent of the students had shown the potential for intellectual blooming, or spurting. Although they might not look different today, their test results suggested that these bloomers would show "unusual intellectual gains" over the course of the school year. — Adam M. Grant

What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can't be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who're solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning 'square' rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution. — Robert M. Pirsig

It is a misuse of our power to take responsibility for solving problems that belong to others. — Peter Block

The big guys like Google weren't always big. Once they were two kids in a garage. Or a dorm room. Some of them set out to be billionaires from the get-go, but some of them didn't. Some of them got just caught up in solving an interesting problem, which happened to be worth billions later. — Lee Child

Decision making and problem solving are not the same. To solve a problem, one needs to find a solution. To make a decision, one needs to make a choice. — Michael J. Marx

A problem well-defined is a problem half solved. — John Dewey

Miracles have a higher percentage of being permanent than magical solutions. — Nike Thaddeus

The ideal partner will be passionate, permanent, partner-ready, problem-solving, parent-material, productive, personable, and protective. Yet partners are just human...The essential question(for the woman with an unplanned pregnancy): Does the biological father (have) enough of them for you to bring a child into the relationship? — Jeff Duffey

Solving new problems is what keeps us moving forward as individuals and as a society, so don't back down. — Garry Kasparov

As much as we may want to withdraw into a world of pure problem solving, we have to acknowledge that the most successful architectures are the ones you can actually convince someone to implement. — Jesse James Garrett

I define democracy as control by the people. Slaves are those who allow others to control their lives. Insofar as people succeed in solving their problems fairly and efficiently at a grassroots level, they retain control over their lives. Insofar as they delegate their problem solving to a higher authority, they lose control over their lives. — Peace Pilgrim

We are at a critical point where rapid change is forcing us to look not just to new ways of solving problems but to new problems to solve. — Tim Brown

Solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent. — Herbert Simon

Be solution oriented. Infect everyone with enthusiasm. — Debasish Mridha

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

For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity. — Elon Musk

To fundamentally solve a problem, we must understand it's cause. In that I mean the chain of actions or circumstances that led to the problem
rather than only the immediate cause, which serves only to place blame. — Charlie Herrick

I don't think it's right that I'm part of the problem. I can't be part of the solution if I'm part of the problem — Haruki Murakami

We believe that in times like these we should turn to each other, not on each other. We believe that government has a role to play, not in solving every problem in everybody's life but in helping people help themselves to the American dream. That's what Democrats believe. — Deval Patrick

There is never a problem without a solution. It's just that you don't see it because fear, insecurity and lack of passion make you blind. — Abhishek Krishnan

The history of science fiction started in the caves 20,000 years ago. The ideas on the walls of the cave were problems to be solved. It's problem solving. Primitive scientific knowledge, primitive dreams, primitive blueprinting: to solve problems. — Ray Bradbury

There are other dimensions of biotechnology. If you think of biotechnology like the Internet, it's not a category - it's an infrastructure that can be deployed to sustain or disrupt. In health care, the most complex problems at the high end have to be dealt with in a problem-solving mode by the best, most experienced physicians you can find. — Clayton Christensen

Life is a series of problem-solving opportunities. The problems you face will either defeat you or develop you depending on how you respond to them. — Rick Warren

Architecture should have little to do with problem solving - rather it should create desirable conditions and opportunities hitherto thought impossible. — Cedric Price

Much of what I have learned, as well as much of my intellectual enjoyment, has come through problem solving. Through the years, I've found it more and more difficult to tell when I was working and when playing, for it has so often turned out that what I have learned playing with problems has been useful in my serious work. — Frederick Mosteller

Americans have a tendency to believe that when there's a problem there must be a solution. — Henry Kissinger

Distributed programming is the art of solving the same problem that you can solve on a single computer using multiple computers. — Mikito Takada

Think outside the square. Think for yourself don't just follow the herd. Think multidisciplinary! Problems by definition, cross many academic disciplines. — Lucas Remmerswaal

Running a farm is about solving a problem, and that's always interesting to me. But it's a constant process. — Chris Blackwell

Raising the minimum wage a lot across the board would make a big difference. It's not the only thing, but it's an indispensable part of solving the problem. — Nick Hanauer

Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem. — Russell L. Ackoff

Creative problem solving is not necessarily tantamount to cheating. — V. St. Clair

People put problems in front of me, I solve them — Kirsten Beyer

There is no fault, only responsibility. — Rob Liano

The exercise of blending people's problem-solving abilities to produce the desired outcome is a worthwhile thing to do. — Pearl Zhu

Problems in your life are like the weights in the gym. You can either get weighed down by them or turn them to your advantage and become stronger. — Toffee

When making the problem go away is more important than solving the problem leadership begins to fail. The easy way vs. The character way. — William James Moore

Some well-meaning folks think if we stop talking about racism, it'll magically disappear, like the smell of an errant fart. But like a fart, people might try to be polite and ignore it, but everyone knows it's there. Avoidance has never been a great tactic in solving any problem. For most situations in life, not addressing what's going wrong only makes matters worse. It's like someone breaks your arm, and the person who slammed the baseball bat into it is saying, 'The only reason it won't heal is because you keep complaining that it hurts.' How about you get me a cast so the bone can set straight again? America does not want to put the effort into providing this cast. This is why we must talk about race, and we must do it openly. — Luvvie Ajayi

I have been where you are now. I have felt the fears and resolved them. I have had the doubts and concerns and found the way forward.
Lift up your head, and step ahead ... — Moutasem Algharati

4. Real men are men who have devoted their lives to solving the problem of others and giving a helping hand to those they meet in their journey through life. These are the kind of men that history can never forget. — Bien Sufficient

Great teachers in the world include "Why". !t can help you assess and access your wanderings over the needed span of problem, and to dig out the solutions from depths. — Priyavrat Thareja

She sat at the dining table, a steaming mug of tea in front of her, a distant look in her eyes. Holden couldn't tell if she was melancholy or solving a complex engineering problem in her head. Those looks were confusingly similar. — James S.A. Corey

Truth is not always about pragmatic problem solving and making things "work," but about reconciling contradictions. Just because something might have some dire effects does not mean it is not true or even good. Just because something pleases people does not make it true either. — Richard Rohr

Business is all about solving people's problems - at a profit. — Paul Marsden

We'll never solve the problems we don't talk about. — Justin Young