Richard Hamming Quotes

How do we attack important problems? Pose the right question.

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.

If you are able to state a problem - any problem - and if it is important enough, then the problem can be solved.

As a society, we are underinvesting resources in research on the societal implications of AI technologies.

Going from PayPal, I thought: 'Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?' Not from the perspective, 'What's the best way to make money?'

The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.

Often in life, the most important question we can ask ourselves is: do we really have the problem we think we have?

I'd like to see people, instead of spending so much time on the ethical problem, get after the problems that really affect the people of this country

We thought the companies that owned these [social media] platforms would care about the country and their impact on it. They don’t. They actively promote conflict and conspiracy and anesthetizing nonsense — because those things promote engagement, and engagement equals money.

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

To launch a business means successfully solving problems. Solving problems means listening.

You can't solve a problem until you address the problem.

The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.

To solve a problem, you have to be able to state what the problem is or at least say the name.

The gross size of our talent inventories is less important than the net use of our talents?

Sometimes you have to go outside your field of study to find the right people.

One of the most important rules of personal effectiveness is the 10/90 rule.

Maybe this is my morality coming in again but it was important to me that the actor [ in Notes On A Scandal] was above the age of consent. Although really, what's the difference between 15 and 16? It's the law, yeah, but he's very mature.

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

Our most important problems cannot be solved; they must be outgrown.

The thing that has always interested me in the kinds of shows that I do have more to do with the consequences of behavior than the behavior itself. Pulling a trigger and shooting somebody, or dismembering somebody.

Much of the most important evils that mankind have to consider are those which they inflict upon each other through stupidity or malevolence or both.

Tis easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate.

It troubles me that we are so easily pressured by purveyors of technology into permitting so-called "progress" to alter our lives without attempting to control it-as if technology were an irrepressible force of nature to which we must meekly submit.

I do not think that we have psychological and ethical and economic problems. We have human problems, with psychological, ethical and economical aspects, and as many others as you like.