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

At home, we must reject the mistaken notion – a notion that has dominated too much of the public dialogue for too long – that ever bigger Government is the answer to every problem.

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people’s progress.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.

I don’t want to get into it, but if you know someone, it doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say or they do.

I am one of those people who believes that the solution to the world’s problems is to be found behind the Iron Curtain.

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.

If two smart, intelligent, clever guys sit together on a table, and you both want the same, where can be the problem? We all want to be successful.

We as women, we have to understand that we know more, just even instinctively, than we think we do.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

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 don’t think culture is something you can describe.

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.

I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

One of my direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me, he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on. And he’d say, ‚Boss, we’ve got this, and that, and the other thing.‘ And I’d look at him and I’d say, ‚Good.‘

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.

I’m of the school of thought where, if you can’t sort something out for yourself, no one can help you. Rehab is great for some people but not others.

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?

What goes on inside a star is better understood than one might guess from the difficulty of having to look at a little dot of light through a telescope, because we can calculate what the atoms in the stars should do in most circumstances.

When we value correct principles, we have truth – a knowledge of things as they are.

Men and women do think differently, and frankly, we don’t understand each other. Not at all! But that’s what makes relationships so amazing.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won’t have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

Don’t bother people for help without first trying to solve the problem yourself.

I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.

If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed.

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

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.

I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid; they could adapt to almost any circumstance; when confronted with problems, they could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them.

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.

I have a collective sense of suffering.