Problem Quotes - Page 40

• The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Philosophy, Prejudice, Common

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Mind, World, Economic

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• The Settlement ... is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city. It insists that these problems are not confined to any one portion of the city. It is an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other.

  Jane Addams

  Cities, Effort, Hull House

  Jane Addams (1949). “Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes”, p.70, Hayes Barton Press

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• It's important to focus on the solution, not the problem.

  Donald Trump

  Focus, Important, Solutions

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• Most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives--professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems.

  Barack Obama

  Winning, People, Political

  Barack Obama (2007). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.48, Canongate Books

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• Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions. And that's what we have to change first. We have to change our politics, and come together around our common interests and concerns as Americans.

  Barack Obama

  Together, Demand, Firsts

  A video posting, announcing his candidacy for President of the United States, barackobama.com, January 16, 2007.

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• The answers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure.

  Barack Obama

  Lying, Pride, America

  First Speech to a Joint Session of Congress, delivered 24 February 2009

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• I don't believe that the American people want us to focus on our job security. They want us to focus on their job security. I don't think they want more gridlock. I don't think they want more partisanship. I don't think they want more obstruction. They didn't send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive. That's not what they want. They sent us to Washington to work together, to get things done, and to solve the problems that they're grappling with every single day.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Believe, Fighting

  Barack Obama's remarks at GOP House Issues Conference in Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. January 29, 2010.

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• All problems have to be solved eventually by ONESELF, and that's where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap because, in the last analysis, A MAN IS AN ISLAND.

  Kenneth Williams

  Men, Islands, Lovely

  "Kenneth Williams: secret loves behind the life of a tormented man" by Vanessa Thorpe, www.theguardian.com. October 9, 2010.

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• Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don't talk about what democracy means - what it bestows on us - the revolutionary idea that it isn't just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency.

  Bill Moyers

  Mean, Revolutionary Ideas, Issues

  "The Power of Democracy". Speech accepting the Public Intellectual Award of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation on February 07, 2007. "Moyers on Democracy". Book by Bill D. Moyers, p. 92, 2008.

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• Innocence lost is not easily regained. The designer simply cannot predict the problems people will have, the misinterpretations that will arise, and the errors that will get made.

  Donald A. Norman

  Errors, People, Innocence

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Don Norman, ch. 6, 1988.

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• Computer scientists have so far worked on developing powerful programming languages that make it possible to solve the technical problems of computation. Little effort has gone toward devising the languages of interaction.

  Donald A. Norman

  Powerful, Effort, Gone

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Don Norman, ch. 6, 1988.

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• In actual fact, the female function is to explore, discover, invent, solve problems crack jokes, make music - all with love. In other words, create a magic world.

  Valerie Solanas

  Magic, Female, Cracks

  Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, 1967.

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• I just want people who are qualified, I want them to believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. So yep, I don't have a problem with appointing an openly gay person. Because they're not going to try to put sharia law in our laws.

  Herman Cain

  Believe, Gay, Law

  "Cain Says He Would Be Ok With Appointing Gay Cabinet Members Because They Wouldn’t Impose Sharia Law". thinkprogress.org. June 06, 2011.

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• I tremble for our world, where, in the smallest ways, we find it impossible, as Marshall Hodgson enjoined, to find room for the other in our minds. If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? I no longer think that any principle or opinion is worth anything if it makes you unkind or intolerant.

  Karen Armstrong

  Thinking, Our World, Mind

  Karen Armstrong (2010). “The Spiral Staircase”, p.333, Vintage Canada

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• I describe it ( the new aesthetics) 'radically': I say aesthetics = human being. That is a radical formula. I set the idea of aesthetics directly in the context of human existence, and then I have the whole problem in the hand, them I have not a special problem, I have a "holography" (reacting on a former suggestion of the public as a slight joke, fh) I don't know exactly what a holography is.. (1973

  Joseph Beuys

  Hands, Ideas, Special

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• When external and internal forces hostile to the development of socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of the restoration of the capitalist system, when a threat arises to the cause of socialism in that country ... this is no longer merely a problem for that country's people, but a common problem, the concern of all socialist countries.

  Leonid Brezhnev

  Country, Socialist Countries, People

  Speech at the 5th Congress of the Polish United Workers Party (12 November 1968), quoted in "The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy" by Matthew J. Ouimet, 2003.

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• I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Land, Differentiation, Research

  "Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Why We Should Not Name Human Races - A Biological View", p. 231, 1977.

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• People, particularly over-moralistic Americans, have often seen me as a pessimist and humourless to boot, yet I think I have an almost maniacal sense of humour. The problem is that it's rather deadpan.

  J. G. Ballard

  Thinking, People, Boots

  "Age of Unreason". Interview with Jeannette Baxter, www.theguardian.com. June 22, 2004.

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• If in the modern world wars have unfortunately to be fought (and they do, it seems) then they must be stopped at the first possible moment, otherwise they corrupt us, they create new problems and make our future even more uncertain. That is more than morality; it's sense.

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  War, World, Firsts

  Interview with James Cameron, Picture Post, October 28, 1950.

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• When we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That's something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. That's different. When they [Conservative right wing Republicans] talk about values, they're talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values.

  Bill Maher

  Jesus, Kindness, Thinking

  "Real Time with Bill Maher", November 5, 2004.

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• Our art culture makes no attempt to search the past for precedents, but transforms the entire past into a sequence of provisional responses to a problem that remains intact.

  Andre Malraux

  Art, Past, Culture

  "The Voices of Silence". Book by Andre Malraux, Doubleday, Part IV, Chapter VII, 1953.

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• My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell.

  Anne Lamott

  Sweet, Father, Reading

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• Strategy making needs to function beyond the boxes to encourage the informal learning that produces new perspectives and new combinations... Once managers understand this, they can avoid other costly misadventures caused by applying formal techniques, without judgement and intuition, to problem solving.

  Henry Mintzberg

  Perspective, Judgement, Intuition

  "The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning" by Henry Mintzberg, hbr.org. 1994.

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• We find that the manager, particularly at senior levels, is overburdened with work. With the increasing complexity of modern organizations and their problems, he is destined to become more so. He is driven to brevity, fragmentation, and superficiality in his tasks, yet he cannot easily delegate them because of the nature of his information.

  Henry Mintzberg

  Senior, Organization, Tasks

  "The structuring of organizations: A synthesis of the research". Book by Henry Mintzberg, 1979.

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