Top 100 Problem-Solving Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Life is a continuous exercise in creative problem solving.”

— Michael J. Gelb

52. “I’m a problem-solver.”

— Madeleine Albright

53. “It is wise to direct your anger towards problems – not people; to focus your energies on answers – not excuses.”

— William Arthur Ward

54. “This problem, once solved, will be simple.”

— Thomas A. Edison

55. “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.”

— Archimedes

56. “When you don’t know what to do, do the thing in front of you.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

57. “My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

58. “If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems.”

— Mark Zuckerberg

59. “Look for solutions, not problems.”

— Dan Eldon

60. “If you’re overwhelmed by the size of a problem, break it down into smaller pieces.”

— Chuck Close

61. “Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”

— René Descartes

62. “Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

— Douglas R. Hofstadter

63. “Mathematics is not a spectator sport!”

— George Pólya

64. “We must meet the challenge rather than wish it were not before us.”

— William J. Brennan

65. “Successful people don’t have any fewer problems than unsuccessful people; they just have a different mindset in dealing with them.”

— John C. Maxwell

66. “Don’t fight your problem. Know that there is a solution.”

— Joseph Murphy

67. “It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.”

— Stephen Hawking

68. “Success is a collection of problems solved.”

— I. M. Pei

69. “Without a standard there is no logical basis for making a decision or taking action.”

— Joseph M. Juran

70. “Merely complaining without proposing an alternative offers nothing.”

— Jacque Fresco

71. “If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.”

— W. Edwards Deming

72. “If a user is having a problem, it’s our problem.”

— Steve Jobs

73. “Life isn’t about living without problems. Life is about solving problems.”

— Tom Krause

74. “If there is a problem you can’t solve, then there is an easier problem you can’t solve: find it.”

— George Pólya

75. “If there is a solution to a problem, there is no need to worry. And if there is no solution, there is no need to worry.”

— Dalai Lama XIV

76. “If you focus on the problem, you can’t see the solution. Never focus on the problem.”

— Patch Adams

77. “A problem well-defined is a problem half solved.”

— John Dewey

78. “The stronger person is not the one making the most noise but the one who can quietly direct the conversation toward defining and solving problems.”

— Aaron T. Beck

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

— Colin Powell

80. “It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

81. “The secret of success is to find a need and fill it, to find a hurt and heal it, to find somebody with a problem and offer to help solve it.”

— Robert H. Schuller

82. “Every problem contains the seed of its own solution.”

— Norman Vincent Peale

83. “Problems almost always create opportunities – to learn, grow and improve.”

— John C. Maxwell

84. “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.”

— John F. Kennedy

85. “If you can stare hard at your problems, they almost always shrink or disappear, because you almost always find a better way of dealing with them than if you don’t face them head on. The more difficult the problem, the more important it is that you stare at it and deal with it.”

— Ray Dalio

86. “If you can do something about a situation, why worry? And if you can’t do something about a situation, why worry?”

— Dalai Lama XIV

87. “The first step to dealing with a problem is admitting that you have a problem.”

— Jase Robertson

88. “Any problem is an opportunity. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity.”

— Vinod Khosla

89. “Crisis moments create opportunity. Problems and crises ignite our greatest creativity and thought leadership as it forces us to focus on things outside the norm.”

— Sam Cawthorn

90. “Prioritize your problems and take care of them one at a time, the highest priority first. Don’t try to do everything at once or you won’t be successful. A leader who tries to take on too many problems simultaneously will likely fail at them all.”

— Jocko Willink

91. “Every big problem is a big opportunity.”

— Vinod Khosla

92. “Do it. Try it. Fix it.”

— Sam Walton

93. “You can do only one thing at a time. I simply tackle one problem and concentrate all efforts on what I am doing at the moment.”

— Maxwell Maltz

94. “Frustration is a very positive sign. It means that the solution to your problem is within range, but what you’re currently doing isn’t working, and you need to change your approach in order to achieve your goal.”

— Tony Robbins

95. “Life is problems. Living is solving problems.”

— Raymond E. Feist

96. “Lots of times, our main problem isn’t our problem. Our biggest problem is our perspective on our problem.”

— Steven Furtick

97. “To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

— Charlie Munger

98. “Invert, always invert.”

— Charlie Munger

99. “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

— Albert Einstein

100. “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.”

— Henry Ford