"Science isn't just about solving this or that puzzle. It's about understanding how the world works: the whole world from the vastness of the cosmos to the particularity of an individual human life. It's worth thinking about how all the different ways we have to talk about the world manage to fit together."
- Sean M. Carroll
Knowledge
"There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle."
- Deepak Chopra
Philosophy
"The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity."
- Douglas Horton
Philosophy
"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle."
- Lewis Carroll
Self-awareness
"All pieces of the puzzle need to fall in the right place to be a champion team."
- Shreyas Iyer
Teamwork
"The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution."
- Stephen Sondheim
Optimism
"Children astound me with their inquisitive minds. The world is wide and mysterious to them, and as they piece together the puzzle of life, they ask 'Why?' ceaselessly."
- John C. Maxwell
Awareness
"When I studied graphic design, I learned a valuable lesson: There's no perfect answer to the puzzle, and creativity is a renewable resource."
- Biz Stone
Creativity
"Whenever you start working on something, you have to go about it with the underlying assumption that this puzzle has a solution, right? If you started a jigsaw puzzle not knowing whether all the pieces were in the box, it would not be a fun exercise."
- Boyan Slat
Motivation
"That's another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it's as if things were coming together in my mind. It's like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it's it's like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together."
- Jordan Peterson
Knowledge
"I trained with Shaolin monks in China and I faced a lot of limitations I had to get over. I got hurt, I got injured, I got tired, but I always came back for more because my brain told me I could overcome it all. It was a mental puzzle I was being asked to solve."
- Dan Hardy
Perseverance
"I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing."
- Karen Thompson Walker
Creativity
"So now it is time to disassemble the parts of the jigsaw puzzle or to piece another one together, for I find that, having come to the end of my story, my life is just beginning."
- Conrad Veidt
New Beginnings
"Unraveling the threads of a good game story is like solving a well-crafted puzzle. After a lengthy, sometimes difficult journey, the pieces click into place, and you're rewarded with the satisfying payoff of a job well done."
- Jason Schreier
Achievement
"I think each person, if you're a CEO, the most important thing is to have - to me, is to pick people around you that aren't like you, that complement you. Because you want to build a puzzle; you don't want to stack Chiclets up and have everyone be the same. And so I believe in diversity with a capital D."
- Tim Cook
Leadership
"I think that, at the end of the day, I'm drawn to a certain level of ambiguous storytelling that requires hard thought and work in the same way that the 'New York Times' crossword puzzle does: Sometimes you just want to put it down or throw it out the window, but there's a real rewarding sense if you feel like you've cracked it."
- Damon Lindelof
Persistence
"A good puzzle, it's a fair thing. Nobody is lying. It's very clear, and the problem depends just on you."
- Erno Rubik
Focus
"I love doing the 'New York Times' crossword puzzle, even on the days I can't finish it."
- Lauren Graham
Joy
"I am a woman of many talents and they're all just pieces of the puzzle that make me and make my career."
- Michelle Phillips
Self-confidence
"I have never been able to read Agatha Christie - the pleasure is purely in the puzzle, and the reader is toyed with by someone who didn't decide herself who the killer was until the end of the writing."
- A. S. Byatt
Joy
"I look at things like a puzzle, and it's just got to fit. If you put the wrong puzzle piece in the wrong place, it doesn't work. That's how I look at everything."
- Alvin Kamara
Focus
"Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn't always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them."
- Kurt Vonnegut
Self-awareness
"Sometimes I'll have sections that I'm not quite sure how they fit in the puzzle of a tune, they'll get moved around; what I think was originally a verse ends up becoming the chorus, or what's an intro gets dropped as a hook, things get shifted around a lot."
- Gotye
Creativity
"I'm only 26 - I don't know anything about life yet. Life is like a puzzle and my pieces are spread all over the world."
- Ville Valo
Personal Growth
"When you write non-fiction, you sit down at your desk with a pile of notebooks, newspaper clippings, and books and you research and put a book together the way you would a jigsaw puzzle."
- Janine di Giovanni
Creativity
"The brain is the most complex, challenging scientific puzzle we have ever tried to decode."
- Paul Allen
Knowledge
"I got a fancy reputation. During high school, every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented, I knew."
- Richard P. Feynman
Knowledge
"Tell the truth so as to puzzle and confound your adversaries."
- Henry Wotton
Integrity
"A jigsaw puzzle is my form of meditation. In New York, I glued all of the ones I did together and hung them up on the wall."
- Carly Chaikin
Meditation
"We put our music together, piece by piece, like a jigsaw puzzle."
- Ronnie Van Zant
Creativity
"The simplest way out of the puzzle of time travel is to say that it can't be done. That's very likely the right answer. However, we don't know for sure."
- Sean M. Carroll
Philosophy
"Golf is a puzzle without an answer. I've played the game for 40 years and I still haven't the slightest idea how to play."
- Gary Player
Adversity
"Why do we take pleasure in gruesome death, neatly packaged as a puzzle to which we may find a satisfactory solution through clues - or if we are not clever enough, have it revealed by the all-powerful tale-teller at the end of the book? It is something to do with being reduced to, and comforted by, playing by the rules."
- A. S. Byatt
Philosophy
"Being a playwright is like the equivalent of doing a jigsaw puzzle that has 1,500 pieces, and it's a jigsaw of a blue sky. Not a cloud in sight."
- Lewis Black
Creativity
"Every horse I get on I can adapt to. It's like a jigsaw puzzle."
- Charlotte Dujardin
Adaptation
"A little girl who finds a puzzle frustrating might ask her busy mother (or teacher) for help. The child gets one message if her mother expresses clear pleasure at the request and quite another if mommy responds with a curt 'Don't bother me - I've got important work to do.'"
- Daniel Goleman
Empathy
"Every film is a puzzle really, from an editorial point of view."
- Walter Murch
Creativity
"Once I get on a puzzle, I can't get off."
- Richard P. Feynman
Motivation
"I don't think there is a hidden purpose to the universe that you have to puzzle out."
- Robert Fulghum
Philosophy
"I want to listen to my Apple Music on my iPhone. I also want to listen to it on my iPad. I want to play it on my Apple TV; I want to be connected everywhere I go. It fits into the puzzle of everything that is Apple, and, therefore, it should not be seen as some sort of separate entity that is trying to find its way."
- Bozoma Saint John
Connection to Earth
"I have restaurants, bookshops... but it's not an empire, more... a puzzle. If it were an empire, all my restaurants would be the same."
- Alain Ducasse
Philosophy
"I've been working on 'The New York Times' crossword puzzle on the subway. I can make it until about Wednesday."
- Eddie Kaye Thomas
Happiness
"'Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid' was my favorite of all the things I ever did, because it was like doing a Sunday crossword puzzle and beating it."
- Carl Reiner
Joy
"Written by the ancient Chinese philosopher of the same name, the 'Zhuangzi' is one long perplexing puzzle of a rambling collection of enigmatic short stories. It's a strange feeling to laugh at a joke written by someone in the 4th century B.C."
- Patrick Stump
Philosophy