It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

I’m of the school of thought where if you can’t sort something out for yourself then no one can help you.

I love Los Angeles, and it’s been very good to me, but if everyone is running around telling the stories, who’s living them? You don’t play characters that are celebrities – you play guys who know what to do when their septic tank’s blocked.

Personally, I’d like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask?

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there’s no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That’s all crap.

Put your leaders in stressful scenarios. Make them figure out solutions under pressure. See if you can make them frustrated, angry, and flustered, and then demand decisive leadership from them. They will be challenged at first, but they will get better over time.

I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

Inside of every problem lies an opportunity.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.

Necessity… the mother of invention.

If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of your solutions – for the fun of it – then one day you’ll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one!

I consider the fact that thousands of children die each day from starvation and a lack of medicine a crisis for humanity and a problem we must collectively attempt to solve.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain’t so.

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

When you begin to worry, go find something to do. Get busy being a blessing to someone; do something fruitful. Talking about your problem or sitting alone, thinking about it, does no good; it serves only to make you miserable. Above all else, remember that worrying is totally useless. Worrying will not solve your problem.

Solutions are not the answer.

Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.

Example is leadership.

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.

Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

I think equation guessing might be the best method to proceed to obtain the laws for the part of physics which is presently unknown. Yet, when I was much younger, I tried this equation guessing, and I have seen many students try this, but it is very easy to go off in wildly incorrect and impossible directions.

I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.

There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.

He that speaks much, is much mistaken.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

It’s the way I study – to understand something by trying to work it out or, in other words, to understand something by creating it. Not creating it one hundred percent, of course; but taking a hint as to which direction to go but not remembering the details. These you work out for yourself.

When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.

We welcome the scrutiny of the world – because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfect.

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.

Our problem right now is that we’re so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there’s a little utopia.

I got a fancy reputation. During high school, every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented, I knew.

The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

We do not know where to look, or what to look for, when something is memorized. We do not know what it means, or what change there is in the nervous system, when a fact is learned. This is a very important problem which has not been solved at all.

I’m just hoping that people understand that Islam is peace and not violence.

A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers. I think it’s the most ridiculous concept.

There is always an easy solution to every problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.

Don’t tell your problems to people: eighty percent don’t care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

It’s a common misconception that money is every entrepreneur’s metric for success. It’s not, and nor should it be.

Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.

When I have been travelling around to speak in different countries, I am always offered help to write about the specific climate policies in specific countries. But that is not really necessary. Because the basic problem is the same everywhere.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.

I’m always amazed at how many people assume a business has to lose money before it makes money.

Here’s something that’s contrary to popular belief: I actually don’t like thinking. I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don’t. I do not like to think at all.