# Quotable "Solutions"

- An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
  Robert A. Humphrey
- There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.
  H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956), The Divine Afflatus / Prejudices: Second Series, 1920
- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
  Henry J. Tillman
- Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.
  Edward Teller (1908 - 2003)
- The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
  David Friedman
- When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
  R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983)
- We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
  Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)
- It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.
  Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)
- The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
  Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)
- All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
  Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968), 'Strength to Love,' 1963
- It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
  G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936), Scandal of Father Brown (1935)
- Focus 90% of your time on solutions and only 10% of your time on problems.
  Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book
- Within the problem lies the solution
  Milton Katselas
- Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.
  Paul Hawken, Growing a Business
- An old puzzle asks how a barometer can be used to measure the height of a building. Answers range from dropping the instrument from the top and measuring the time of its fall to giving it to the building's superintendent in return for a look at the plans. A modern version of the puzzle asks how a personal computer can balance a checkbook. An elegant solution is to sell the machine and deposit the money.
  Jon Bentley, More Programming Pearls
- Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution.
  Dr. David Schwartz
- To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
  Henri Poincare
- I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work.
  Thomas Alva Edison
- Any solution to a problem changes the problem.
  R.W. (Richard William) Johnson (b. 1916), U.S. journalist. Washingtonian (November 1979).
- Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.
  Brian Aldiss (b. 1925), British science fiction writer.
- Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution.
  Karl Kraus (1874 - 1936), Austrian writer.
- There is nothing more productive of problems than a really good solution.
  Dr Nathan S Kline
- The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seek the simple solution.
  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860 - 1904), Russian author, playwright.
- Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.
  Karl Marx (1818 - 1883), German political theorist, social philosopher.