Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

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.

Presented with the claims of nineteenth-century racist anthropology, a rational person will ask two sorts of questions: ‚What is the scientific status of the claims?‘ ‚What social or ideological needs do they serve?‘

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.

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

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.

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas.

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.

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

Only the aspirants for president are fool enough to believe what they read in the newspapers.

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

I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

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.

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

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.

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

As you deal with more and more complex systems, it becomes harder and harder to find deep and interesting properties.

The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking – it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.

I’m a good teacher and am great at observation and picking out what’s wrong and fixing it.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.

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.

I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

The drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

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.

Religion is just mind control.

The most common criticism I get is that I’m being manipulated and you shouldn’t use children in political ways, because that is abuse, and I can’t think for myself and so on. And I think that is so annoying! I’m also allowed to have a say – why shouldn’t I be able to form my own opinion and try to change people’s minds?

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?

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.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.

I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.