Quotes

J. R. Platt

• "Count that day lost whose low descending sun sees from thy mind no gamesworth of reasoning done."

Old Saw

• "Armed with just a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Henri-Louis Bergson

• "The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."

Pablo Picasso

• "All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

G. Polya in How To Solve It:

• "Heuristic reasoning is reasoning not regarded as final and strict but as provisional and plausible only, whose purpose is to discover the solution of the present problem."

• "Good problems and mushrooms of certain kinds have something in common; they grow in clusters. Having found one, you should look around; there is a good chance that there are some more quite near."
• "No idea is really bad, unless we are uncritical. What is really bad is to have no idea at all."
• "Assume what is required to be done as already done, what is sought as found, what you have to prove as true." (See Zen.)
• "The main advantage of the exceptionally talented may consist in a sort of extraordinary mental sensibility. With exquisite sensibility, he feels subtle signs of progress or notices their absence where the less talented are unable to perceive the difference."
• "Look out for the right model to imitate.... Observe a stimulating teacher.... Compete with a capable friend."
• "A wise man changes his mind. A fool never does."

Galileo Galilei

• "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself."

Sun Tsu

• "Tell me, and I will forget; show me, and I may remember; involve me, and I will understand."

Barbara Harrell Carson

• "Students learn what they care about, from people they care about and who, they know, care about them."

Please send me your favorite quotes relevant to Scientific Problem Solving for inclusion on this page.