Indirect Method Quotes

Since the fabric of the universe is most perfect and the work of a most wise Creator, nothing at all takes place in the universe in which some rule of maximum or minimum does not appear ... there is absolutely no doubt that every affect in the universe can be explained satisfactorily from final causes, by the aid of the method of maxima and minima, as it can be from the effective causes themselves ... Of course, when the effective causes are too obscure, but the final causes are readily ascertained, the problem is commonly solved by the indirect method.

I too realize that the less I preach the more likely I am to be heard.

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.

Politics is marginal, but literature moves along by indirection.

I don't go for knockout punches.

I never think in metaphors or fully make those kind of associations myself. I just lay down a complex situation and hope things arise from that.

We often get in quicker by the back door than by the front.

I can only approach things indirectly, or I can't approach them at all.

Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.

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.