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- 18-Jan-21 - "The Christian Way of Life in Human Relations," speech, General Assembly fo the National Council of Churches, St Louis (4 Dec 1957) | WIST on Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963).
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- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Republic, Book 1, 347c.
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- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907).
Quotations about problem
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.
Eric S. Raymond (b. 1957) American software developer, writer [a.k.a. ESR]
The Cathedral and the Bazaar, ch. 2, Rule 18 (1999)
(Source)
The certainties of one age are the problems of the next.
R. H. Tawney (1880-1962) English writer, economist, historian, social critic [Richard Henry Tawney]
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, ch. 5 (1926)
(Source)
Difficulties are things that show what men are.
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish philosopher, theologian
(Misattributed)
Misattributed to Kierkegaard by Cyril Connolly, Horizon, vol. 11 (1945). More properly attributed to Jacobus Johannes van der Leeuw (1893–1934), The Conquest of Illusion, ch. 1: "The mystery of life in not a problem to be solved, it is a reality to be experienced."
Unless someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.
The only difference between a problem and a solution is that people understand the solution.
This problem, when solved, will be simple.
Charles F. Kettering (1876-1958) American inventor, engineer, researcher, businessman
Sign at the General Motors research laboratories
(Source)
Quoted by Kettering in "Don't Be Afraid to Stumble," The Rotarian (Jan 1952)
The facts are indispensable; they are not sufficient. To solve a problem it is necessary to think.
If this stone won’t budge at present and is wedged in, move some of the other stones around it first.
There are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold, or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice upon a dark night.
The older I get, the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first — a process which often reduces the most complex human problems to manageable proportions.
The only problems that have simple solutions are simple problems. The only managers that have simple problems have simple minds. Problems that arise in organisations are almost always the product of interactions of parts, never the action of a single part. Complex problems do not have simple solutions.
If thy Business be perplexed, divide it, and look upon all its Parts and sides.
At the bottom of every social problem we will find a social wrong.
When a mess, which is a system of problems, is taken apart, it loses its essential properties and so does each of its parts. The behavior of a mess depends more on how the treatment of its parts interact than how they act independently of each other. A partial solution to a whole system of problems is better than whole solutions of each of its parts taken separately.
To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.
Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. Problems are extracted from messes by analysis. Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes.
Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.
In reactive problem solving we walk into the future facing the past — we move away from, rather than toward, something. This often results in unforeseen consequences that are more distasteful than the deficiencies removed.
A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution.
There is almost no marital problem that can’t be helped enormously by taking off your clothes.
Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.
Be sure of the fact before you lose time in searching for a cause.
James Burgh (1714-1775) British politician and writer
The Dignity of Human Nature, Sec. 5 “Miscellaneous Thoughts on Prudence in Conversation” (1754)
(Source)
CLAUDIUS: When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions.
In political institutions, almost everything we call an abuse was once a remedy.
If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.
Shimon Peres (b. 1923) Polish-Israeli politician, statesman
(Attributed)
Widely attributed to Peres in different sources. Quoted in the Wall Street Journal (7 Feb 2001). Donald Rumsfeld says that Peres made the observation to him.
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking at it that one overcomes it; but, rather, often by working on the one next to it. Certain people and certain things require to be approached on an angle.
Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem neat, plausible, and wrong.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
“The Divine Afflatus,” New York Evening Mail (16 Nov 1917)
(Source)
Reprinted in Prejudices: Second Series (1920) and A Mencken Chrestomathy, ch. 25 (1949).
Variants:
- "There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
- "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."
I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.
William Faulkner (1897-1962) American novelist
Letter to David Kirk, Oxford, Miss. (8 Mar 1956)
(Source)
After all my time here, I’ve yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, didn’t become still more complicated.
Poul Anderson (1926-2001) American writer
Call Me Joe [Arne Viken] (1957)
Sometimes attributed to Arthur Koestler (who attributed the quote to Anderson). See here for more details (and a reference to WIST).