- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.
Please feel free to browse and borrow.
- 17,927 quotes and counting ...
Quote Search
Authors
Topic Cloud
action age America author beauty belief change character death democracy education ego error evil faith fear freedom future God government happiness history humanity integrity justice leadership liberty life love morality perspective politics power pride progress religion science society success truth virtue war wealth wisdom writing- I've been adding topics/tags since 2014, so not all quotes have been given one. Full topic list.
WISTish
- * Visual quotes (graphics, memes) only
Admin
Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (7,906)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,030)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,950)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,116)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,889)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,290)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,932)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,752)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,601)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,470)
Most Quoted Authors
Author Cloud
Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- 26-Jan-21 - Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #4214 (1732) | WIST on Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #3366 (1732).
- 26-Jan-21 - Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, # 241 (1732) | WIST on A Collection of English Proverbs (1678).
- 26-Jan-21 - Horrified Magazine - The British Horror Website on “Writing the Male Character,” Hagey Lecture, U. of Waterloo (9 Feb 1982).
- 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).
- 8-Jan-21 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Speech to the electors of Bristol (3 Nov 1774).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Republic, Book 1, 347c.
Quotations about solution
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness. Luck seldom measures swords with wisdom. Most things in life quick wit and sharp vision can set right.
Democritus (c. 460 BC - c. 370 BC) Greek philosopher
Frag. 119 (Diels) [tr. Bakewell (1907)]
(Source)
Alt. trans.: "Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity. For Chance rarely conflicts with intelligence, and most things in life can be set in order by an intelligent sharpsightedness." [tr. Freeman (1948)]
Bakewell lists this under "The Golden Sayings of Democritus." Freeman notes this as one of the Gnômae, from a collection called "Maxims of Democratês," but because Stobaeus quotes many of these as "Maxims of Democritus," they are generally attributed to the latter.
The greatest skill in cards is to know when to discard; the smallest of current trumps is worth more than the ace of trumps of the last game.
Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], # 31 (1647) [tr. Jacobs (1892)]
(Source)
A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.
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."
I doubt if there is in the world a single problem, whether social, political, or economic, which would not find ready solution if men and nations would rule their lives according to the plain teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.
It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.
In the crisis of this hour — as in all others that we have faced since our Nation began — there are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them in the last analysis really come down to this: Deny your responsibilities.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Speech, Democratic Party Dinner, Washington (7 Oct 1967)
(Source)
Sometimes paraphrased "There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility."
Often the fear of one evil leads us into a worse.
[Souvent la peur d’un mal nous conduit dans un pire.]
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)
Solutions nearly always come from the direction you least expect, which means there’s no point trying to look in that direction because it won’t be coming from there.
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.
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.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English writer, physician
Introductio ad Prudentiam, # 583 (1725)
(Source)
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.
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.
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.
“So?” Bob said. “Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved.”
“Bob,” I said. “You can’t just go around killing people.”
“I know. That’s why you should do it.”
“No, no. I can’t go around killing people, either.”
In political institutions, almost everything we call an abuse was once a remedy.
Questions show the mind’s range, and answers, its subtlety.
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.
There are some remedies worse than the disease.
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little. Do what you can.
I never, ever say, “I can’t,” about anything. I might say, “I don’t have the authority to make that decision,” or, “Building A is too heavy for me to lift,” or, “I will need training before I pilot that space shuttle.”
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."
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.