Richard Hamming Quotes

I always thought problem solving was greatly overrated - and that the most important thing was problem creation.

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.

The impossible - we are told - cannot be achieved. To overcome the 'impossible,' we need to use our wits and be fearless. We need to break the rules and to circumvent - some would one say to cheat.

The best creative solutions don't come from finding good answers to the questions that are presented... They come from inventing new questions!

The genius is making a way out of no way.

Lateral thinking... is the process of using information to bring about creativity and insight restructuring. Lateral thinking can be learned, practised and used. It is possible to acquire skill in it just as it is possible to acquire skill in mathematics.

If everyone is defining a problem or solving it one way and the results are subpar, this is the time to ask, What if I did the opposite? Don't follow a model that doesn't work. If the recipe sucks, it doesn't matter how good a cook you are.

If you are creative enough to imagine a problem, you're clever enough to discover a solution.

If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.

I've always thought that problem-solving is highly overrated and that problem creation is far more interesting.

The capacity to innovate - the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life - and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge.

Don't criticise a hypothesis, come up with a better one.

Guessing before proving! Need I remind you that it is so that all important discoveries have been made?

As long as you can Houdini your way out of the Sisyphean constraints then originality happens.

New ideas are sometimes found in the most granular details of a problem where few others bother to look.

Being creative isn't confined to a specific set of professions -- everyone can and should be innovative.

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

In all cases where doubt crops up, ask yourself, "If I had a gun to my head and had to do it, how would I do it?" It's not as hard as you think.

Always remember, however, that there’s usually a simpler and better way to do something than the first way that pops into your head.

[Consider] a fence or gate erected across a road] The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

Creativity is the ability to see and to respond.

If you double the number of experiments you do per year you're going to double your inventiveness.

The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and technique is not, however, just looking around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly. Unanticipated novelty, the new discovery, can emerge only to the extent that his anticipations about nature and his instruments prove wrong... There is no other effective way in which discoveries might be generated.

We do not make very full value of the opportunities provided by technology because we prefer critical to constructive thinking, argument to design.