A Quote by Robert A. Heinlein

In a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem.

Robert A. Heinlein

Quote Topics

Any Change Dilemma Helpful Problem Then Variable

Quote Author

Robert A. Heinlein
American - Writer
July 7, 1907 - May 8, 1988

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.

Richard Hamming

...Stop blaming me, thinking I'm the problem. If you think I'm the problem, then you have to change me. If you realize that you're the problem, then you can change yourself, learn something and grow wiser. Most people want everyone else in the world to change themselves. Let me tell you, it's easier to change yourself than everyone else.

Robert Kiyosaki

You can always create a fraction by putting one variable upstairs and another variable downstairs, but that soes not establish any causal relationship between them, nor does the resulting quotient have any necessary relationship to anything in the real world.

Thomas Sowell

To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science.

Ian Plimer

A function of a variable quantity is an analytic expression composed in any way whatsoever of the variable quantity and numbers or constant quantities.

Leonhard Euler

One helpful thing to keep in mind as a retort-stopper is that you won't "win," you won't change anyone's mind, you won't change any votes, you won't make the atmosphere in the room any better, YOU won't feel any better.

Carolyn Hax

Any time you stop looking at evil as a black and white thing, it's helpful. So the fact that there won't be any obligatory Islamic terrorist stereotypes in movies any more, that'd be helpful.

John Cusack

The technology is the independent variable, the social system the dependent variable. Social, systems are therefore determined by systems of technology; as the latter change, so do the former.

Leslie White

There is no solution to any world problem, to any national problem, to any city problem or to any local problem, unless and until people get their Realization.

Nirmala Srivastava

We never had any problem from them. Jyoti Basu has been very kind to us. He was the one who told me "Mother, please do something for these (jail) girls. He has been helpful and always accessible to us over phone. We also never had any problem whenever we wanted to meet him.

Mother Teresa

If you are able to state a problem - any problem - and if it is important enough, then the problem can be solved.

Edwin Land

The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose/lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape.

Martin Van Creveld

Occasionally, chewing over some random letter writer's dilemma, I'll find myself imagining scenarios where the problem could be sidestepped by an innocent fib or series of evasive manoeuvres. Then, I slap myself on the wrist.

Lynn Coady

And this has been man's stupidity - a very ancient one: whenever he gets into difficulty, he changes the word. Change the word marriage into soul mates, but don't change yourself. And you are the problem, not the word; any word will do. A rose is a rose is a rose...you can call it by any name. You are asking to change the concept, you are not asking to change yourself.