Michael Feldman Quotes

It is always possible to approach a goal by a detour.

That's what we all do: endlessly take the long way around.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

As regards obstacles, the shortest distance between two points can be a curve.

The longest way round is the shortest way home

I had this habit of an academic of answering the question. I should have fobbed it off.

That's a good question. Let me try to evade you.

'Three Kingdoms' gives you a panoply of different routes; everyone can find their own path. It shows that sometimes the route to fulfilment or success is not the obvious one. You must take twists and turns to achieve a goal.

I often work by avoidance.

If you're going to go to the moon, you don't shoot the rocket right at the moon. You have to go at it obliquely.

Companies have too many experts who block innovation. True innovation really comes from perpendicular thinking.

By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering.

Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.

It's a very good question, very direct, and I'm not going to answer it.

Creativity is not just for artists. It's for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it's for engineers trying to solve a problem; it's for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way.

Which reminds me of a fortune cookie: you often find your destiny on the path you take to avoid it.

Leftists always want to... circle around subjects... rather than addressing any subject directly.

Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

Even if you're not going anywhere, don't get in the way.

Politics is marginal, but literature moves along by indirection.

I can't argue my way out of a paper bag.

A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.

[Describing FDR:] ... a man who thinks the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line but a corkscrew.

That’s a detour.

When the Department does respond to telegrams it is invariably to recommend evasion of issues that cannot be evaded.