Great Throughts Treasury

"Philosophical thinking is logical thinking, and psychological problems are often rooted in the inability of people to think logically about problems of living." - Elliot D. Cohen

"In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same." - Albert Einstein

"Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them." - Albert Einstein

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." - Albert Einstein

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. We will not solve the problems of the world from the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. More than anything else, this new century demands new thinking: We must change our materially based analyses of the world around us to include broader, more multidimensional perspectives. " - Albert Einstein

"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems." -

"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers. (also cited as Grossman's Law)" -

"All problems become smaller if you don't dodge them but confront them." - William F. Halsey, aka Bill Halsey or "Bull" Halsey

"The answer to [our social problems] lies in democratic free thought where ideas may be generated, challenged, and accepted or rejected on the basis of scientific examination and verification, and evaluated on the basis of the highest human values that emerge from the developing society." - Gerald Alexander Larue

"Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve." - Roger Lewin

"Most teachers do not like controversy. A study some years ago found that 92 percent of teachers did not initiate discussion of controversial issues, 89 percent didn't discuss controversial issues when students brought them up, and 79 percent didn't believe they should. Among the topics that teachers felt children were interested in discussing but that most teachers believed should not be discussed in the classroom were the Vietnam War, politics, race relations, nuclear war, religion, and family problems such as divorce." - Jack L. Nelson & William B. Stanley

"Throughout history, individuals have solved apparently impossible problems during moments of intense inner clarity. Variously called inspiration, peak performance, creative insight, and higher creativity, such moments produce illuminated understanding, which can then be shaped, revised, and carried forward by skill alone." - Helen Palmer

"If you like things easy, you'll have difficulty. If you like problems, you'll succeed." - Laotian Proverbs

"The test of a successful person is not an ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise. We must be willing to make an intelligent compromise with perfection lest we wait forever before taking action. It's still good advice to cross bridges as we come to them." -

"One of life's problems is not that we aim too high and fail. But rather that we aim too low and succeed." - Joe Segal

"Problems of life and death cannot be resolved by any feeling, however rapturous." - Irving Singer

"Environmental problems are essentially ethical because the solutions we attempt depend on our self-perception as a species, and on the future we envision for ourselves and our descendants. And from these considerations flow our prescription of what is good for humanity and for the environment." -

"All social and political problems are interwoven – that energy, for example, affects economics, which in turn affects health, which in turn, affects education, work, family life, and a thousand other things. The attempt to deal with neatly defined problems in isolation from one another… creates only confusion and disaster." - Alvin Toffler

"The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Don't accept superficial solutions of difficult problems. It is better to do a little than much harm." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"The value of philosophy is to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. He who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thought and free them from the tyranny of custom." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"Know that many personal troubles cannot be solved merely as troubles, but must be understood in terms of public issues – and in terms of the problems of history-making. Know that the human meaning of public issues must be revealed by relating them to personal troubles – and to the problems of the individual life." -

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “Press On” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -

"Education will not (take the place of persistence); the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -

"In the final analysis, there is no other solution to a man's problems but the days honest work, the day's honest decisions, the day's generous utterance, and the day's good deed." - Clare Booth Luce

"Get all the facts. Let's not even attempt to solve our problems without first collecting all the facts in an impartial manner." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

"I know with a conviction beyond all doubt that the biggest problem you and I have to deal with - in fact, almost the only problem we have to deal with - is choosing the right thoughts. If we can do that, we will be on the highroad to solving all our problems." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

"Achievement flows from clear intent and focused effort over time. In order to achieve, we have to start where we are, find out what we need, have a plan and follow it through, persisting through difficulties and problems until we reach our goal." - Dan Millman, born Daniel Jay Millman

"In the absence of discriminating thoughts, the mind as we know it ceases to exist. Our suffering - our feeling of discomfort, alienation, loneliness - arises because we create a dualistic way of perceiving everything that separates us from the external. When we view the so-called external phenomenal world as distinct from ourselves, then fear arises, fear that we will lose our lives, that we may not continue to exist. Out of that fear come anger, jealousy, greed, hatred, aversion, attachment - all kinds of clinging. All our problems arise out of seeing ourselves as separate entities. We cling to what we perceive as me; my physical body and my ideas, my mind, my thoughts, my understanding, my beliefs, my concepts, my opinions." - Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi

"One wonders whether a generation that demands satisfaction of all its needs and instant solutions of the world's problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive - it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men." - Eric Hoffer

"To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development." - Felix Adler

"“Self-government” is primarily a personal morality in America, not a political philosophy... Thus does our individualism reduce social problems, always, to the level of private morality, to things outside the scope of legislation." - Garry Wills

"The important question of how poverty is to be abolished is one of the most disturbing problems which agitate modern society." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"One of the paradoxical lessons of the nuclear age is that at the moment when we are acquiring an unparalleled command over nature, we are forced to realize as never before that the problems of survival will have to be solved above all in the minds of men. In this task the fate of the mammoth and the dinosaur may serve as a warning that brute strength does not always supply the mechanism in the struggle for survival." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger

"Problems are only opportunities in work clothes." - Henry J. Kaiser

"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."" - Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov

"There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago." -

"One of the difficulties with our busy modern culture is that we don’t take time to listen to our hearts. Our immediate problems, our plans and thoughts, fill our minds and, lost in thinking, we lose our connection to our hearts and our true nature." - Jack Kornfield

"What the world craves today is a more spiritual and less formal religion. To the man or woman facing death, great conflict, the big problems of human life, the forms of religion are of minor concern, while the spirit of religion is a desperately needed source of inspiration, comfort and strength." - John Davison Rockefeller, Jr.

"Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings." -

"The culture of organization runs strongly to the shifting of problems to others – to an escape from personal mental effort and responsibility. This, in turns, becomes the larger public attitude. It is for others to do the worrying, take the action. In the world of the great organization, problems are not solved but passed on. And there is a further effect. The delegation process just cited adds ineluctably to the layers of command and to the prestige associated with command. That prestige is regularly measured by the number of individual subordinates." - John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"

"When you are a man, you are in the field of time and decisions. One of the problems of life is to live with the realization of both terms, to say, "I know the center, and I know that good and evil are simply temporal aberrations and that, in God's view, there is no difference."" - Joseph Campbell

"Seems to me, it aint the world that's so bad but what we're doin' to it. And all I'm saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love baby, love. That's the secret, yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And then this world would be better. That's wha' ol' Pops keeps saying." - Louis Armstrong, nicknamed Satchmo or Pops

"There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few we can solve by ourselves." -

"Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call for our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck

"Wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems because it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck

"Discipline is the tool required to solve life's problems. What are these tools, these techniques of suffering, these means of experiencing the pain of problems directly? Delaying gratification, accepting responsibility, dedication to truth, and balance." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck

"All occurrences of violence, negativity, conflict crisis, or problems in any society are just the expression of growth of stress in collective consciousness. When the level of stress becomes sufficiently great, it bursts out into large-scale violence, war, and civil uprising necessitating military action." - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, born Mahesh Prasad Varma