R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes

I don't look at a problem and put variables in there that don't affect it.

Never bring the problem solving stage into the decision making stage. Otherwise, you surrender yourself to the problem rather than the solution.

Guys are natural problem solvers - they like to have strategies.

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 get so engaged when I have a problem you cannot solve that I just cannot break away from what I am doing - I keep thinking and thinking and cannot stop.

Thinking - in particular abstract thinking, which most of us are introduced to through the study of mathematics and literature - helps us learn that we can become problem solvers.

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

We're always looking for candidates that have new approaches to problems.

I try to be a positive person, but I'm also always looking and wondering, 'Maybe this could be done differently.' As soon as your mind is in a critical mode, you're halfway through designing; as soon as you start thinking about whether something could be better, you're already halfway through a solution.

I don't have any magical ability. I look at a problem, play with it, work out a strategy.

I think I have the special ability to process information quickly and dissect defenses.

I see myself as a problem solver, creating solutions.

Mathematicians have a certain type of mind, and climbers have a certain type of mind, because climbing poses these incredibly interesting problems for them.

Intelligence is an extremely subtle concept. It's a kind of understanding that flourishes if it's combined with a good memory, but exists anyway even in the absence of good memory. It's the ability to draw consequences from causes, to make correct inferences, to foresee what might be the result, to work out logical problems, to be reasonable, rational, to have the ability to understand the solution from perhaps insufficient information. You know when a person is intelligent, but you can be easily fooled if you are not yourself intelligent.

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.

The math helps you have better understanding and helps you have more creative ideas, but you can't replace the creative ideas

Intelligence is the ability to solve problems

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

Solve problems, make art, think deeply.

Invention requires both disciplines, strict common sense and wild imagination.

Creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have. It is, for example, and this may surprise you, absolutely unrelated to IQ, provided you're intelligent above a certain minimal level.

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

Every valuable creative idea must always be logical in hindsight. If it were not, we would never be able to see its value.

Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.

A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if he is in an error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you put him out of his road he is at a stand. Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure, force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub. (from a letter dated 25 May, 1694)