Quotes & Sayings About Working Out Problems

As economists have often pointed out, we pay doctors for quantity, not quality. As they point out less often, we also pay them as individuals, rather than as members of a team working together for their patients. Both practices have made for serious problems. — Atul Gawande

How often we all try to solve problems by doing more of what's not working - just doing it harder, grinding it out longer. We'll do anything to avoid the lowest of the low - self-examination. — Brene Brown

Well, you have adventures. All start out with troubles, but then you admit your problems and become a better person by working really hard, which is what fertilizes the happy ending and allows it to bloom - just like the end of all the Rocky films, Rudy, The Karate Kid, the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies, and The Goonies, which are my favorite films, even though I have sworn off movies until Nikki returns, because now my own life is the movie I will watch, and well, it's always on. — Matthew Quick

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. — Gene Kranz

I was working with actors who were very easy to work with, but I can just imagine how, with all the other decision-making problems that come up along the way, in addition to that, the whole point of what your doing is following performance and character development. You're building your story with those building blocks, and it is not easy. I've only come out with more respect for directors, from this. — Rick Heinrichs

... The group is a wonderful mix of people - a microcosm, I believe, of what's really out there. Listen, Lucy, you do my job for a while and here's what you learn. No one is normal. Everybody struggles with something. Marital problems, depression, codependency, maybe a looming fascination with shoes or leather bags that keeps her working overtime shifts to pay off her debt. Whatever. Stop thinking everyone else has it together. It's not true. Precious few people have life figured out. 'Normal' just isn't normal anymore. — Ann Wertz Garvin

So it's an interesting process just going through and seeing what works and what doesn't work, and what's the best version of it. It was a good process because I think we all collectively, when everyone would run into issues in the cut or know that things weren't working, they kind of glaringly stuck out so we could focus on fixing those things and it wasn't a situation where you would show it to ten people and you would have ten problems. — Bryan Burk

I believe psychology has done very well in working out how to understand and treat disease. But I think that is literally half-baked. If all you do is work to fix problems, to alleviate suffering, then by definition you are working to get people to zero, to neutral. — Martin Seligman

Recently though, they have been claiming I haven't put out enough specifics. There's a good reason for this, and it fits perfectly with my overall philosophy of leadership: Many of our problems, caused by years of stupid decisions or no decisions at all, have grown into a huge mess. If I could wave a magic wand and fix them, I'd do it. But there are a lot of different voices - and interests - that have to be considered when working toward solutions. This involves getting people into a room and negotiating compromises until everyone walks out of that room on the same page. — Donald J. Trump

Remember that some organizations, especially activist groups, have no obligation to rigorous, unbiased data. They are working to convince you to adopt their view of the world and thus aren't necessarily impartial [...] This type of bias or spin is common, and you need to be on the alert for it in the reports you read. In fact, bias is a major reason to get multiple kinds of trend data before drawing conclusions. Even if activist groups don't publish false information, they might leave out key data, which might lead you in another direction. If you read particularly alarming data, for example, a trend that says, "we're losing 10 percent of all bird species each year," you should make sure you verify it with other sources.

In a world that moves as fast as ours does, sensational problems sometimes arise, but if it's really an issue, more than one expert will be covering it. — Eric Garland

Any cyclist will tell you that one of the things they value most about cycling is what it does for their heads. It cleans out the clutter. Cycling allows for reflection. It simultaneously offers time to mull over problems and to escape those problems. It's both meditative and contemplative. Whether you're weaving through traffic or climbing a long country road, the effect is the same. Your body's working, and your mind is working. And when those two things start working in concert, other aspects of life can start falling into place too. — BikeSnobNYC

Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way
through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn't know about at all. — John Coltrane

When we combine very real workplace inequalities with these romantic opt-out stories, the idea that "having it all" is a laughable goal becomes enshrined as immutable truth. And when we portray opting out as a simple matter of "choice," we ignore the systematic problems that make combining work and motherhood so difficult. — Emily Matchar

The third organizing theme focuses on the relationship between the creator and work in a domain. Early in life, the creator generally discovers an area or object of interest that is consuming. At first the creator seeks to master work in that domain in the manner of others working within the culture; increasingly, however, the very relationship to the domain becomes problematic. The individual then, willingly or unwillingly, feels constrained to try inventing a new symbol system-a system of meaning-that is adequate to the chosen problems or themes and that can eventually make sense to others as well. In each chapter I examine in detail the ways in which a creator forges a new system of meaning in a distinctive domain; it turns out that surprising commonalities hold across the domains as well. — Howard Gardner

I give off rather mixed messages about the law. On the one hand, I can honestly say I don't miss working in a law office. On the other hand I do enjoy watching the law and while the profession may have its problems, I have sold zillions of books out of magnifying them. — John Grisham

And as it quickly became clear, there were not very many survivors to find. Only fourteen people were pulled out of the rubble alive, all within the first twenty-four hours of the collapse. About 50,000 people had been working in the buildings that day. Two thousand and sixteen died. Also among the dead: 343 firefighters and 60 police officers who were in or near the buildings when they collapsed. In the months after the attacks, it was hard to imagine that life would ever go back to normal. It never will for many people, like my friend who lost her brother; like the hundreds of firefighters who have serious health problems caused by the toxic smoke and dust they breathed at Ground Zero; like the thousands who managed to escape that day, but who saw the horrors up close. Today, while the horrors of that day still linger, the city itself is more vibrant than ever. People have done their best to move forward. — Lauren Tarshis

And so I think that the idea of America working with other countries to solve problems is good for us, and it is part of digging us out of the 'my way or the highway' approach that was evident in the previous eight years. — Madeleine Albright

To feel safe, you need to control what the people around you are going to say and do. This is not achieved by going after the root causes of violence. This is not even achieved by working to slowly improve social conditions. It is achieved through silence and disappearance, by moving the offending object or person out of sight. . . . [However] [d]o we want to live in a world that is safe? Do we want to push the homeless out of our cities and call that a victory over poverty? . . . Or do we want to do the very hard work of recognizing and addressing the actual causes of harm to women? Safety is a short-term goal and it is unsustainable. Eventually, the unaddressed causes will find new ways of manifesting themselves as problems. Pull up the dandelions all you want, but unless you dig up that whole goddamn root it's just going to keep showing back up. — Jessa Crispin

The affluent white liberals who were pressing the legal claims of blacks and other minorities "were often sheltered, in their private lives, and largely immune to the costs of implementing minority claims."58 This reality made it possible for conservatives to characterize the "liberal Democratic establishment" as being out of touch with ordinary working people - thus resolving one of the central problems facing conservatives: how to persuade poor and working-class voters to join in alliance with corporate interests and the conservative elite. By — Michelle Alexander

So often, environmentalists and others working to slow the destruction are capable of plainly describing the problems (Who wouldn't be? The problems are neither subtle nor cognitively challenging), yet when faced with the emotionally daunting task of fashioning a response to these clear and clearly insoluble problems, we generally suffer a failure of nerve and imagination. Gandhi wrote a letter to Hitler asking him to stop committing atrocities, and was mystified that it didn't work. I continue to write letters to the editor pointing out untruths, and continue to be surprised each time the newspaper publishes its next absurdity. At least I've stopped writing to politicians. — Derrick Jensen

Rule Number One for working for a white lady, Minny: it is nobody's business. You keep your nose out of your White Lady's problems, you don't go crying to her with yours - you can't pay the light bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not your friends. They don't want to hear about it. And when Miss White Lady catches her man with the lady next door, you keep out of it, you hear me? — Kathryn Stockett

Meditation is the way to develop our natural healing abilities. Healing comes originally from our inner being, from the inner source of silence and wholeness. In the silence, we can let go of all our problems, frustrations, fears, anger and sorrow. Healing happens when we bring everything that we find inside ourselves out into the light. Healing is to embrace and accept everything that we find inside ourselves without judgment or evaluation. Healing happens when we discover an unconditional love and acceptance for ourselves as we are with both our light and dark sides. — Swami Dhyan Giten

If you're working on something and it's not coming together, it's easy to say, "I don't want to show this, until I've figured it out." But a lot of times you don't really solve the problems, and then you start getting into a bad situation because you don't have the time to fix it. — Lee Unkrich

When the years bring wisdom, one learns to leave many problems to their own working out. — Myrtle Reed

I even reached a point of detachment where I was able to see clearly that he was a top operator of a complex vehicle who had some great skills and some fundamental problems. The trick to working well with him was to understand that the problems were his, not mine, and they all seemed to stem from his insecurity. He was unable to view his colleagues as anything other than competitors out to destroy him, who therefore needed to be squashed like bugs. Once, flying up to Washington in a NASA jet, I stopped to refuel and a military guy I'd never met before noticed the plane and said, Hey, do you know ? What an asshole! — Chris Hadfield

One of the problems of taking things apart and seeing how they work - supposing you're trying to find out how a cat works
you take that cat apart to see how it works, what you've got in your hands is a non-working cat. The cat wasn't a sort of clunky mechanism that was susceptible to our available tools of analysis. — Douglas Adams

After decades spent in rewrite rooms surrounded by other shouting writers, I discovered that I work best alone. I like being in charge of my time, working out the problems according to my own rhythms and being able to nap. That's a big one, the napping on demand! — Maria Semple

As a young cavalry officer out of St-Cyr, de Mun first became acquainted with the lives and problems of the poor through the charitable work of the Society of St-Vincent de Paul in his garrison town. During the Commune, as an aide to General Galliffet, who commanded the battalion that fired on the insurgent Communards, he saw a dying man brought in on a litter. The guard said he was an "insurgent," whereupon the man, raising himself up, cried with his last strength, "No, it is you who are the insurgents!" and died. In the force of that cry directed at himself, his uniform, his family, his Church, de Mun had recognized the reason for civil war and vowed himself to heal the cleavage. He blamed the Commune on "the apathy of the bourgeois class and the ferocious hatred for society of the working class." The responsible ones, he had been told by one of the St. Vincent brothers, were "you, the rich, the great, the happy ones of life who pass by the people without seeing them." To — Barbara W. Tuchman

Just as a man is fulfilled through working out the intricate details of solving a problem, a woman is fulfilled through talking about the details of her problems. — John N. Gray

There are two ways. One is to be a puppet, follow the culture, and do whatever they want. That was mentally disturbing to me, and still is. And the other way is to go out. I knew there would be problems from my family, and also from my environment. But I thought that physical pain would be better than the mental pain. And I started working as an artist. — Malina Suliman

Visible alternatives shatter the sense of inevitability, that the system must, necessarily, be patched together in the same form
this is why it became such an imperative of global governance to stamp them out, or, when that's not possible, to ensure that no one knows about them. To become aware of it allows us to see everything we are already doing in a new light. To realize we're all already communists when working on a common projects, all already anarchists when we solve problems without recourse to lawyers or police, all revolutionaries when we make something genuinely new. — David Graeber

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

The ultimate test is always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build our personal problems right into the machine.
The machine responds to your personality. It's just that the personality that it responds to is your real personality, the one that genuinely feels and reasons and acts, rather than any false, blown up personality images your ego may conjure up. These false images are defaulted so rapidly and completely you're bound to be very discouraged very soon if you've derived your gumption from ego rather than Quality.
The real machine you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be out there and the person that appears to be in here are not 2 separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together. — Robert M. Pirsig

Being a full-time feminist means that every day I make a choice to make equality a part of my life, mind, and behavior. I set out purposefully to support women, to create a dialogue with men, and to interject when I see ignorance and misunderstanding. For me this has meant that in my work I often choose to share my financial gains with women (although I do also employ men regularly, to film my music videos or produce my songs with my band Girlboy), and when I see a woman working, or reaching for her ambitions, I like to show my support. In my romantic relationships with men, this has meant when there is misunderstanding, I take the time to think about why that could be, and to discuss whatever problems we face. Thinking about the influence of the gender concept on our behavior and decisions is now ingrained in my subconscious. — Abigail Tarttelin

The sad thing is that, even though we know our lives aren't working in certain areas, we are still afraid to change. We are locked into our comfort zone, no matter how self-destructive it may be. Yet, the only way to get out of our comfort zone and to be free of our problems and limitations is to get uncomfortable. — Robert Anthony

She tried to show them how women could do anything, and do it competently. How problems could be worked out if they ignored what people said and did what conscience required. — Kiana Davenport

My old therapist warned me that avoidance is a dysfunctional way to interact with people you care about, but now I'm starting to understand what he meant when he said it could hurt them, too. Maybe it's time I figure out a better way to deal with my problems. Maybe Artful Dodger isn't working so well for me anymore. — Jenn Bennett

The real technical problems came because people working on the project didn't really follow my proposal at all, but set out to do other things instead of making a laser. — Gordon Gould

The trouble is that when you read criticisms about the other films that I've made you get the impression that they're all about themes, or problems, or ideas. But those are actually things that develop out of characters, out of images and out of other things. These more abstract things develop while working on the material, and out of it. It's not a theoretical exercise from the outset. — Michael Haneke

The fantasy/reality confusion ... it's just marvelous in her work. I mean, there, it's practically like what we do, the fantasy working as a sort of metalogic, with which she can solve real, aesthetic problems in the most incredible ways
I was actually in a few of her productions last year, a sort of ersatz member of the company. But finally I just had to get out. Because when that fantasy seeps into the reality, she just becomes an incredibly ugly person. She feels she can distort anything that occurs for whatever purpose she wants. Whatever she feels, that's what is, as far as she's concerned. But then, I suppose ... ' Bron laughed at the ground, then looked up: they'd just left the Plaza
'that's the right we just fought a war to defend. But Audri, when someone abuses that right, it can make it pretty awful for the rest of us. — Samuel R. Delany

So many of his problems were of a kind that other people did not understand, that he got used to working them out for himself, in silence. — Ursula K. Le Guin