James Howard Kunstler Quotes

Always find different ways to accomplish the mission. Then run a counter-analysis and list the advantages and disadvantages. When you have done that, you are ready to make a decision.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

Coming up with a way to fix mistakes challenges your creativity and your critical thinking skills and your resourcefulness. Often you end up with something better than what you planned on in the first place.

I do not feel certain until I have confronted my initial solution with other solutions - although in fact the first solution often proves to be the right one.

It's always good to take an orthogonal view of something. It develops ideas.

Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.

Early on, in discussions of financial oversight, people would say, 'Well, this is a very complicated problem, therefore it requires a complicated solution.' And at that step, I would say, 'Well, wait a minute. Just because it's a complicated problem doesn't mean the best course of action immediately is one that's complicated.'

I encourage active skepticism - when people are being skeptical because they're trying to identify the best course of action. They're trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.

I don't view myself as a practitioner of a particular skill or method. I'm constantly looking at what's the most interesting problem that I could possibly work on. I really try to figure out what sort of scientist I need to be in order to solve the problem I'm interested in solving.

We've got to be proactive. It's my job to look for unconventional situations that achieve what my clients want.

By the way, intelligence to me isn't just being book-smart or having a college degree; it's trusting your gut instincts, being intuitive, thinking outside the box, and sometimes just realizing that things need to change and being smart enough to change it.

I'm good at thinking outside the box, so much that you realise it's not a box to begin with.

Action is typical of the American style, thought and planning are not; it is considered heresy to state that some problems are not immediately or easily solvable.

One of the biggest challenges we have, as business owners and people, is that we think in linear terms.

Whether that's in communications or marketing or strategy, you need people to come in with a fresh perspective.

I give people ideas on how to solve intractable problems.

Most business problems, you will have an intuitive idea on what to do.

By all means examine the games of the great chess players, but don't swallow them whole. Their games are valuable not for their separate moves, but for their vision of chess, their way of thinking.

Thinking is the highest form of leverage.

Each crisis is different, has its own specificities, and we need to look at it critically; look at each one in its own terms.

Learn to use your brain power. Critical thinking is the key to creative problem solving in business.

You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies. I can never make it easy by saying, 'Here are three things.' You have to derive it yourself to ingrain it in your head for the rest of your life.

Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.

With thought, all problems can be resolved.

Sheer necessity,-the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention.