William Reddington Hewlett Quotes

If I can bring some light to bear on problems like that, I feel that people will be enlightened not only on the question but also on a way of approaching such questions.

I'm sure I have a process, but it mostly takes place in my dreams.

My brain's always working, and gears are turning 24/7. So I was trying to think of solutions.

Today much of what we call education is merely knowledge gathering and remembering. Problem solving and thinking, never strong parts of our educational system, have been downgraded in all but a few scientific subjects.

No, I happen to be one of those people whose memory shuts down under pressure. The answers would come to me in the middle of the night in my sleep! Besides, I am a millionaire.

I thought, 'Okay, what's going to be my edge, and how am I going to define what I'm doing differently?' Once I had that key idea of the software developer as an artist, once I had that idea, a whole bunch of other ideas flowed from that, because I realized that I need to go study the music industry, I need to study the book publishing and Hollywood and figure out how they do things, why they do them that way, and then I need to borrow, and rearrange, the things that they're doing to fit my industry so that I can invent and create this new industry.

Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.

We need to be in the open mode when we are pondering a problem, but, once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it.

We thought all this teaching was to make us smart. What it did was make us stupid. With all the little facts we learned, we never had the time to think.

It was complicated. I understood it, mostly, but I had to think a little sideways to do it.

If you give the actors a problem 'I'm not getting something out of the scene' and it's the writing, we just don't have the scene, if you give them the problem and just give them some key thoughts they can bring some great solutions to the equation too. So if it's just not perfect, or I'm not getting all I can, I'll open it up to them and say let's talk about it.

The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis.

Thinking is one of the most important weapons in dealing with problems

The analysis of data will not by itself produce new ideas.

I had long ago discovered that when a word or formula refused to come to mind the best thing for it was to think of something else: tigers for instance or oatmeal. Then when the fugitive word was least expecting it I would suddenly turn the full blaze of my attention back onto it catching the culprit in the beam of my mental torch before it could sneak off again into the darkness.

Solve problems, make art, think deeply.

Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.

I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

A research problem is not solved by apparatus; it is solved in a man's head.

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

I think being a producer makes you a problem solver, so you kind of go, "Well there's a problem. What do we do? How do we solve it?"

I like talking to engineers best. They built bridges, they're very precise, very disciplined, yet I find they have roving minds.

Invert, always invert.

The critical mind is the creative mind.