Butler Lampson Quotes

We can solve any problem by introducing an extra level of indirection.

Butler Lampson

• Problem
• Level
• Indirection

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Quotes to Explore

• You can't solve a dignity problem with military force.

  

  Rand Paul
  • Problem
  • Military
  • Dignity

• Liberals have to get more comfortable with dealing with the poor as they actually are. I admire their refusal to look down on the least among us, but at some level, that can become an excuse to never really look at the problem at all.

  

  J. D. Vance
  • Problem
  • Poor
  • Down

• I'm used to being surrounded by really smart 22-year-old students who have no problem saying that something I suggested is not a very good idea.

  

  Harold E. Varmus
  • Good
  • Problem
  • Smart

• I think the real problem is that nobody buys albums anymore, so you don't get the depth of the artists that are out today. What you get is whatever they felt is politically correct to get on there and actually make some impact. I think that's where you're losing your depth. You're only getting the very top of everything. It really bothers me.

  

  Gary Allan
  • Real
  • Today
  • Problem

• You can always make a film somehow. You can beg, borrow, steal the equipment, use credit cards, use your friends' goodwill, wheedle your way into this or that situation. The real problem is, how do you get people to see it once it is made?

  

  Walter Murch
  • People
  • Real
  • Friends

• Bangalore now wants a person who doesn't only play politics. Bangalore needs a problem solver, and I am a problem solver. I will be the bridge between Bangalore and the Centre.

  

  Nandan Nilekani
  • Problem
  • Politics
  • Bridge

• As soon as science has solved one problem, new ones arise. This is the essence of science, and it applies, of course, also to the field of essential oils.

  

  Otto Wallach
  • Science
  • Problem
  • New

• This would not be a problem if I were driving a snowplow.

  

  Aaron Allston
  • Problem
  • Driving
  • Were

• Here's the problem the Free Syrian Army has. They really want to topple the regime in Damascus, and this is where most of the fight takes place, between Aleppo and Damascus for the Free Syrian Army.

  

  Jack Keane
  • Free
  • Problem
  • Fight

• I stand behind all the lyrics I've ever written; I don't have a problem with that.

  

  Ian MacKaye
  • Problem
  • Lyrics
  • Stand

• Now that I'm more mature, in a funny way, I can even appreciate that I've bad to become more aware of my body. Since I've chosen acting as my career, I have to keep my weight down anyway-I've been used to it for years, so it's no problem. And there's nothing I can't do.

  

  Dana Hill
  • Bad
  • Career
  • Funny

• There's no question that tar sands in Canada are probably the largest source of oil available to the U.S. over a long period of time. There's as much oil in the tar sands probably as there is in Saudi Arabia. The problem is, there's a huge capital requirement to develop that.

  

  T. Boone Pickens
  • Time
  • Long
  • Question

• I think it is a universal problem that we are so often cruel to the people we love.

  

  Vicki Lawrence
  • Love
  • Problem
  • For Her

• I think the New Bohemians' inability to say no was a big part of our problem.

  

  Edie Brickell
  • Think
  • Problem
  • Say

• I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man's problem just to avoid violence.

  

  Malcolm X
  • American
  • Man
  • Black

• That is what we know how to do better than anyone else: We know how to maximize value for our projects. If the government would like to hire my services to maximize value for their stake, they should approach me. No problem.

  

  Dan Gertler
  • Problem
  • Government
  • Value

• We mostly feel fearful because we feel powerless. We feel powerless, I contend, because of a style of thinking that splits information in two poles that makes us lose all the operative information we need to solve the problem.

  

  Patricia Sun
  • Thinking
  • Problem
  • Style

• YouTube is a problem. It has very big traffic, but it refuses to contribute to the weight of that traffic.

  

  Xavier Niel
  • Problem
  • YouTube
  • Traffic

• I think it's a very valuable thing for a doctor to learn how to do research, to learn how to approach research, something there isn't time to teach them in medical school. They don't really learn how to approach a problem, and yet diagnosis is a problem; and I think that year spent in research is extremely valuable to them.

  

  Gertrude B. Elion
  • Thinking
  • Science
  • Problem

• We are being at once wisely aware of our own frivolity if we avoid hitting and whacking and prefer 'striking' and 'smiting'; talk and chat and prefer 'speech' and 'discourse'; well-bred, brilliant, or polite noblemen (visions of snobbery columns in the Press, and fat men on the Riviera) and prefer the 'worthy, brave and courteous men' of long ago.

  

  J. R. R. Tolkien
  • Men
  • Brave
  • Long Ago

• More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of men whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time.

  

  Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Conscience
  • Philosophers
  • Contradiction

• Faith does not increase, nor does it decrease; because a diminution in it would be unbelief.

  

  Abu Hanifa
  • Faith
  • Unbelief
  • Diminution

• Every film is a puzzle really, from an editorial point of view.

  

  Walter Murch
  • View
  • Point Of View
  • Puzzle

• We can solve any problem by introducing an extra level of indirection.

  

  Butler Lampson
  • Problem
  • Level
  • Indirection