In order to solve pertinent problems, there is no other way but to seek and implement new forms of relationship and interaction. Only the creative interaction of divergent groups ... will allow for the answers we all seek to emerge.
- Mikhail Gorbachev

Much of life is not about getting answers.
It is identifying current questions.
Once you get the question right, the answers always come.

Keep on the outlook for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are currently working on.
- Thomas A. Edison

If I could solve all the problems myself, I would.
- Thomas Edison, when asked why he had a team of twenty-one assistants

Where do you expend your energy when facing a difficult situation in life?
Do you expend energy cursing it, nursing it or rehearsing it?
How much better to focus on reversing it.
- Anne Landers

A problem well stated is a problem half solved.
- Charles F. Kettering

When we must deal with problems, we resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and we forget that these results can only be achieved when we venture into - and emerge again from - the darkness of uncertainty and confusion.
- Carl G. Jung

Don't Just DO Something, Stand There!

Get perspective and reflect rather than just continuing to do the same thing.

Doing nothing is very hard to do - you never know when you're finished.
- Leslie Nielsen

Solutions are not the answer.
- Richard Nixon

For every complex problem, there is a simple solution....and it is nearly always wrong.

Don't push so hard that people resist your solution, but don't take so long that people lose interest.

There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see, yet small enough to solve.
- Mike Leavitt

I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken

If you want unlimited options for solving a problem, follow this 3 step procedure:
1. Engage the "What if?" before you lock on to the "How to?."
2. Find people who add new perspectives and create new conversations.
3. Pay attention to those new voices.

The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
- Blaise Pascal

Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.
- Edmund Burke
There is a difference between problem spotting and problem solving.
- Susan Woodring

Be thankful for problems. If they were less difficult, someone with less ability might have your job.

Houston, we have a problem.
- James Lovell

If I'd know how many problems I was going to run into before I finished, I can't remember a single project I would have started.
- Andy Rooney

Solving problems is not so difficult. The trick is getting them to stay solved.

No problem can withstand the power of sustained creative thought.

The problem is not the problem. The problem is one's attitude about the problem.

It is better to look for what works before you focus on what's broken.
- C.W. Metcalf

When people become involved in the problem, they become significantly and sincerely committed to coming up with solutions to the problem.
- Stephen Covey

If you come to your boss early with a problem, you get a partner. If you come late with a disaster, you get a judge.
- Danny Cox

People who can't admit they are part of the problem, will never be part of its solution.
- Kenneth Kaye

"DIS is DE" approach to problem-solving:
- "DE" fine the problem
- "DE" part from the norm
- "DE" lete the impractical
- "DE" velop the better
- "DE" termine the best
- "DE" liver the best

If you think something outside of yourself is the cause of your problem, you will look outside of yourself for the answer.

We teach collaborative problem-solving. In school that's called cheating.
- Edward Bales, Motorola University

The chief cause of problems is solutions.

Solve it. Solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong. If you solve it wrong, it will come back and slap you in the face, and then you can solve it right. Lying dead in the water and doing nothing is a comfortable alternative because it is without risk, but it is an absolutely fatal way to manage a business.
- Thomas J. Watson, Jr.

People who are only good with hammers see every problem as a nail.
- Abraham Maslow

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
- G.K. Chesterton

To every problem there is already a solution whether you know it or not.
- Grenville Kleiser

Successful people are simply people who learn to solve their problems ... they are not people without problems.

Anytime you thing that the problem is "out there", that thought in itself may be the problem. If it is "out there" then you have no control and you have to wait until it changes.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
- Albert Einstein

The best solution to a problem is the most simple one that creates no new problems.

The best way out of a problem is through it.

Your solution to the problem changes the problem.

For every problem, there is a solution which is simple, neat & wrong.