Elegant Solutions Quotes

• When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions.

  Steve Jobs

  Inspirational, Persistence, Simple

  Newsweek Interview on October 14, 2006. "Steve Jobs Legacy: His Stanford University Address & More Great Quotes" by, www.thedailybeast.com. October 07, 2011.

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• When you have a big, ugly problem, there's never going to be a neat, elegant solution that is totally painless or without a cost.

  Henry Paulson

  Cost, Ugly, Problem

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• Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions. [...] It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. [...] You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.

  Steve Jobs

  Hard Work, Simple, Order

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• Complexity has and will maintain a strong fascination for many people. It is true that we live in a complex world and strive to solve inherently complex problems, which often do require complex mechanisms. However, this should not diminish our desire for elegant solutions, which convince by their clarity and effectiveness. Simple, elegant solutions are more effective, but they are harder to find than complex ones, and they require more time, which we too often believe to be unaffordable

  Niklaus Wirth

  Strong, Believe, Learning

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• For every problem, there exists a simple and elegant solution which is absolutely wrong.

  Ellet J. Waggoner

  Wise, Wisdom, Simple

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• A brute force solution that works is better than an elegant solution that doesn't work.

  Steve McConnell

  Design, Programming, Force

  Steve McConnell (2004). “Code Complete”, p.107, Pearson Education

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• Engineering is not merely knowing and being knowledgeable, like a walking encyclopedia; engineering is not merely analysis; engineering is not merely the possession of the capacity to get elegant solutions to non-existent engineering problems; engineering is practicing the art of the organizing forces of technological change ... Engineers operate at the interface between science and society.

  Gordon S. Brown

  Art, Knowledge, Science

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• You have to have the will not to jump at the first solution, because the really elegant solution might be right around the corner.

  Ray Dolby

  Persistence, Might, Firsts

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• In mathematics, if I find a new approach to a problem, another mathematician might claim that he has a better, more elegant solution. In chess, if anybody claims he is better than I, I can checkmate him.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Might, Chess, Problem

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• It was an interesting thing to do. Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Book, Writing, Ideas

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.

  Michael Foot

  Mean, Helping Others, Common Purpose

  Michael Foot (1984). “Another heart and other pulses: the alternative to the Thatcher society”, HarperCollins

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• I look at Google and think they have a strong academic culture. Elegant solutions to complex problems.

  Mark Zuckerberg

  Strong, Thinking, Google

  "Startup School". Interview with Jason Kincaid, www.washingtonpost.com. October 24, 2009.

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