Complex Solutions Quotes

There are simple answers to the nation's problems, but not easy ones.

I completely understand why people are concerned about immigration. There's no silver bullet, no one thing you can do to suddenly deal with all the problems and concerns with immigration, and that includes leaving the E.U.

Rather than recognising the challenges of a fast-changing society require sometimes complex responses, that we live in a world of trade-offs, that easy answers are usually false answers, we have seen the rise of the simplifiers.

Mathematicians always like a deceptively difficult problem.

Unfortunately when we get to the “debates” as we all know these are never debates. There are questions where there is never a follow up, where you ask a question and I the candidate give an answer that has nothing to do with your question, and then we go on and somebody else asks the other person and back and forth. It is not just the fault of the candidates. We tend to have to have a simple short answer to complex problems for the sound byte requirements of modern journalism and perhaps the education levels of the average citizen. Complex problems can’t be reduced to that.

We fail when we try to give simple answers to complicated problems.

It’s not very profitable to sit and think nowadays. So many problems, and they seem all to have such twists to them – nothing is straightforward.

The remedies are neither easy, nor cheap, nor immediately realizable.

Engineering stimulates the mind.

Can I actually make a difference? Can I get people to believe in politics once again? Can I get people to accept more complex answers to complex questions? I know I can. I know that's what I do very well.

Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.

Nobody reads anymore in America. Reading has become the least effective delivery system for narrative. That's sad because prose is the means by which you can deliver very complicated, nuanced explanations of problems and possible solutions.

Ugly problems often require ugly solutions. Solving an ugly problem in a pure manner is bloody hard.

My experience in government is there is a whole host of unintended consequences you have to think through. I can't un-know that, I find it harder now to offer simple solutions.

Whether it's mending a failing company, fighting corruption, tackling disease, or rebuilding a marriage, the hardest problems defy just-add-water remedies. Indeed, slapping on a Band-Aid when surgery is needed usually just makes things worse.

Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by 'sophisticated' methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

My love of dynamic complications often led me to avoid simplicity when perhaps it was the wisest choice.

Are you quite sure that all those bells and whistles, all those wonderful facilities of your so called powerful programming languages, belong to the solution set rather than the problem set?

We cannot resort to simplistic or extreme solutions which substitute myths for common sense.

Easy answers are never really useful ones, so hopefully we're not trying to peddle easy answers.

Of course homelessness has many causes and the solutions are often frustratingly complex.

John Kerry doesn't think in terms of black-and-white. He's all gray, and he looks at all sides of the issues. That makes people think he likes to be devil's advocate. Whatever you say, he'll challenge you on.

I'm not a politician because I'm an artist. Politicians have a very easy answer for a very complicated question. I have a very complicated question for what you consider very easy situations.

If you look at our customers, our customers tend to be really high-end people who make big, sophisticated systems.