Christopher Alexander Quotes

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

There are no simple solutions to today’s problems.

If you go deep into a problem, you'll find most all of the time that there are yet more problems to be solved from the ground up.

I like working intensely, then going away and thinking about it, working out why it didn't work and then coming back to it. It makes the work richer, I think.

Solving big problems is easier than solving little problems.

Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

The chief cause of problems is solutions.

The solution of one problem always brings a few more problems to the surface to be solved, which were hidden underneath the theory of transmission.

The kind of problems we're facing now, no government can fix.

You can’t fix the things that bother you the most by passing a law.

The world is complicated. But does every problem require a complicated solution?

Mathematicians always like a deceptively difficult problem.

Oftentimes, when people write me 4,000-word letters, I write them back and tell them if their problem's that complicated, they probably need a lawyer or a cop, and not me.

The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.

It is not a simple matter to differentiate unsuccessful from successful experiments. . . .[Most] work that is finally successful is the result of a series of unsuccessful tests in which difficulties are gradually eliminated.

"I think you're begging the question," said Haydock, "and I can see looming ahead one of those terrible exercises in probability where six men have white hats and six men have black hats and you have to work it out by mathematics how likely it is that the hats will get mixed up and in what proportion. If you start thinking about things like that, you would go round the bend. Let me assure you of that!"

Often, problems are knots with many strands, and looking at those strands can make a problem seem different.

Not all complex problems have easy solutions; so says science (so warns science.)

The process of debugging, going an correcting the program and then looking at the behavior, and then correcting it again, and finally iteratively getting it to a working program, is in fact, very close to learning about learning.

There are no solved problems; there are only problems that are more or less solved.

There are a thousand forms of evil; there will be a thousand remedies.

So that is the design process or the creative process. Start with a problem, forget the problem, the problem reveals itself or the solution reveals itself and then you reevaulate it. This is what you are doing all the time.

Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.

I avoid grandiose plans. I start with a small piece that I can do. I go to the root of the problem and then work around it. It's building brick by brick.