Ursus Wehrli Quotes

Solve problems, make art, think deeply.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

In mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

I was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.

Our key to transforming anything lies in our ability to reframe it.

Think small. Don't pretend you know the answers. Experiment; get feedback. These are all the premises of 'Think Like a Freak,' really.

The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done-men who are creative, inventive, and discovers. The second goal of education is to form minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered.

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.

You read something and you know it's not there yet. There's a little section here that... this part's good but that is a little not, it doesn't quite work. That doesn't quite work. That's easy. To say, "OK, now, this is what I think will fix it." That's harder. And most people can tell you what's wrong with something. Very few people can say what they would do to fix it.

In mathematics, the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems.

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

If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one.

They say that structure is freedom, and in a sense it is. When you're dealing with multiple constraints, you have to figure out what you can get out of that.

Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.

I take references from the past and flip them.

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

I'm always glad to see somebody rethink something rather than reproduce something I did.

It's more fun to arrive a conclusion than to justify it.

I think that's the greatest gift one can have: point of view. You know? I've come to believe that if you have a bad memory of something, change it.

Architecture is invention.

People simply learn to process information to the point where it doesn't serve true creativity.

Politics is the art of the possible; creativity is the art of the impossible.

We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently.