This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Childhood trauma and sufferings does not provide us with an excuse for our problems. It explains the origins of our problems while in no way relieving us of the responsibity to understand and improve ourselves." - Peter R. Breggin
"A detailed investigation of the problem as to whether the Creto-Mycenaean-Greek-Roman and the Western total culture has been integrated into Sensate, Integral, and Ideational supersystems and how this integration has manifested itself in paintings, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, in science and philosophy, ethics and law, forms of social, political, and economic organizations, in the movement of wars and revolution, and how and in what centuries from the twelfth century B.C. up to the twentieth century A.D. Sensate, Integral, and Ideational supersystems dominated-these are the central problems studied in the Dynamics." - Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
"Our century is probably more religious than any other. How could it fail to be, with such problems to be solved? The only trouble is that it has not yet found a God it can adore." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"Here I shall present, without using Analysis [mathematics], the principles and general results of the Théorie, applying them to the most important questions of life, which are indeed, for the most part, only problems in probability. One may even say, strictly speaking, that almost all our knowledge is only probable; and in the small number of things that we are able to know with certainty, in the mathematical sciences themselves, the principal means of arriving at the truth—induction and analogy—are based on probabilities, so that the whole system of human knowledge is tied up with the theory set out in this essay. " - Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
"I asked for strength,and God gave me difficulties to make me strong. I asked for wisdom, and God gave me problems to learn to solve. I asked for prosperity,and God gave me a brain and brawn to work. I asked for courage, and God gave me dangers to overcome. I asked for love, and God gave me people to help. I asked for favors,and God gave me opportunities. I received nothing I wanted. I received everything I needed. " - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
"Together we all sense our duty to preach. Faced with problems and disappointments, many people will try to escape from their responsibility: escape in selfishness, escape in sexual pleasure, escape in drugs, escape in violence, escape in indifference and cynical attitudes. But today, I propose to you the option of love, which is the opposite of escape. Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth- in a word, to know himself- so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves. " - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
"Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
"Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore... prove ultimately futile." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
"Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife." - Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL
"fundamental principles depended on philosophers and individual problems on scientists; and he believed that, among early men, the philosophically wise managed everything and discovered all crafts and industry. ... For true judgement the standard is right reasoning; but precepts, persuasion, consolation, and exhortation are necessary; and enquiry into causes as opposed to matter is important. [paraphrased]" - Posidonius, aka Posidonius of Rhodes or Posidonius of Apameia (meaning "of Poseidon") NULL
"We say that the problems of Burma are due to bad government, not because the situation in Burma is bad in itself. It is because of bad government that we are in such trouble. So it is like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it." - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
"I displayed, or usually displayed, all those traits deemed essential to job readiness: punctuality, cleanliness, cheerfulness, obedience. These are the qualities that welfare-to-work job-training programs often seek to inculcate, though I suspect that most welfare recipients already possess them, or would if their child care and transportation problems were solved. " - Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
"A number of schools around the country are incorporating the teaching of empathy & self-discipline--what social theorists call character education--into their curricula. In New Haven CT, a social development approach is integrated into every public school child's daily routine. Children learn techniques for developing & enhancing social skills, identifying & managing emotions like anger, and solving problems creatively. The program appears to raise grades as well as to improve behavior." - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"For those who live in urban areas with few businesses of any kind, the impact of changes in the private sector is most direct and devastating, with high unemployment and crime, drug abuse, welfare dependency, and school failure. Problems elsewhere eventually affect us all so government has a big responsibility to help remedy them. But its resources are limited. Other developed countries, like Japan and Germany, are more committed to social stability than we have been, and they tailor their economic policies to maintain it. We have chosen a different path, leaving more of our resources in the private sector. As a society, we have a choice to make. We can permit the marketplace largely to determine the values and well-being of the village, or we can continue, as we have in the past, to expect business to play a social as well as an economic role. That means we have to look realistically at what government must require business to do, principally in the areas of health, safety, the environment [and so on]." - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"The episodic, reactive, almost frantic pace of what is broadcast makes children feel and act frantic and shortens their attention spans and their patience for activities that take time and problems that don't yield immediate solutions. " - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"The standards and accountability movement has grown dramatically over the last decade. The No Child Left Behind Act became law, and it has laid bare the problems in many of our poorest, worst-performing schools. We can no longer say that we didn't know that these schools were failing some of our most vulnerable kids. To improve the quality of education, we need to improve instruction in the classroom. Nationwide, two million teachers will leave teaching over the next decade. NYC already loses 30% more math teachers and 22% more science teachers than it certifies every year. IN 2001, I proposed the National Teacher Corps, which brings teachers into the classroom, and a new initiative that would provide more schools with strong principals. Both became law." - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"Each age is characterized by its own astronomical myriads of new, special-case experiences and problems to be stored in freshly born optimum capacity human brains — which storages in turn may disclose to human minds the presence of heretofore undiscovered, unsuspectedly existent eternal generalized principles." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
"I was convinced in 1927 that humanity's most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
"It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, and as-yet unsolved problems." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
"Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life's challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
"So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me -- each one of us is born of two, and we really belong to each other. I vowed to do my own thinking, instead of trying to accommodate everyone else' opinion, credo's and theories. I vowed to apply my inventory of experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet Earth." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
"We are here as local information harvesters, local problem-solvers in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe. The fact that we get away from physical problems doesn't mean we go away from problems. The problems are really rarely physical." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
"One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful." - Albert Einstein
"The center of gravity of religion has been openly changing for some time now from supernaturalism to what may best be called a humanistic naturalism….. There have been many steps forward in the past, for every age must possess its own religion, a religion concordant with its knowledge and expressive of its problems and aims." - R. W. Sellars, fully Roy Wood Sellars
"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them." - Albert Einstein
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." - Albert Einstein
"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science." - Albert Einstein
"We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them" - Albert Einstein
"It is good to set aside a specific time every day to be heartbroken and to speak out all ones problems before God, but the rest of the day be only happy. " - Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
"We have looked first at man with his vanities and greed and his problems of a day or a year; and then only, and from this biased point of view, we have looked outward at the earth he has inhabited so briefly and at the universe in which our earth is so minute a part. Yet these are the great realities, and against them we see our human problems in a different perspective. Perhaps if we reversed the telescope and looked at man down these long vistas, we should find less time and inclination to plan for our own destruction." - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson
"This country has far more problems than it deserves and far more solutions than it applies." - Ralph Nader
"We now have a two-party system that is overwhelmed with its own arrogance and complacency, ... It offers little more than Band-Aids for some of the nation's problems and does not project a sense of confidence among the American people." - Ralph Nader
"We don't properly discriminate. We never discriminate properly when we're dealing with another group and one of the big problems about religion is that religious people don't know that they are probably as flagrant in these misjudgments as irreligious people." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
"As I considered the matter carefully it gradually came to light that all those matters only were referred to mathematics in which order and measurements are investigated, and that it makes no difference whether it be in numbers, figures, stars, sounds or any other object that the question of measurement arises. I saw consequently that there must be some general science to explain that element as a whole which gives rise to problems about order and measurement, restricted as these are to no special subject matter. This, I perceived was called 'universal mathematics'." - René Descartes
"If I found any new truths in the sciences, I can say that they follow from, or depend on, five or six principal problems which I succeeded in solving and which I regard as so many battles where the fortunes of war were on my side." - René Descartes
"The second was to subdivide each on the problems I was about to examine: into as many parts as would be possible and necessary to resolve them better." - René Descartes
"Avoid problems and you'll never be the one who overcame them." - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
"Life is slowly passing us by. Without a genuine sense of enthusiasm, a zest for life, and a lighthearted spirit, we take our problems and obstacles too seriously. People are seen as burdens instead of gifts. Challenges are dreaded instead of seen as opportunities." - Richard Carlson
"Often we allow ourselves to get all worked up about things that, upon closer examination, aren't really that big a deal. We focus on little problems and blow them out of proportion. ... Whether we had to wait in line, listen to unfair criticism, or do the lion's share of the work, it pays enormous dividends if we learn not to worry about little things. So many people spend so much of their life energy sweating the small stuff that they completely lose touch with the magic and beauty of life." - Richard Carlson
"The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology. There is no reason to suppose that electronic computers are conscious when they simulate, although we have to admit that in the future they may become so. Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself...Whatever the philosophical problems raised by consciousness, for the purpose of this story it can be thought of as the culmination of an evolutionary trend towards the emancipation of survival machines as executive decision-takers from their ultimate masters, the genes. Not only are brains in charge of the day-to-day running of survival machine affairs, they have also acquired the ability to predict the future and act accordingly. They even have the power to rebel against the dictates of their genes, for instance in refusing to have as many children as they are able to. But in this respect man is a very special case, as we shall see." - Richard Dawkins
"This book is written in the conviction that our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but that it is a mystery no longer because it is solved. Darwin and Wallace solved it, though we Shall continue to add footnotes to their solution for a while yet, I wrote the book because I was surprised that so many people seemed not only unaware of the elegant and beautiful solution to this deepest of problems but, incredibly, in many cases actually unaware that there was a problem in the first place!" - Richard Dawkins
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy " - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
"In this age of specialization men who thoroughly know one field are often incompetent to discuss another. The great problems of the relations between one and another aspect of human activity have for this reason been discussed less and less in public. When we look at the past great debates on these subjects we feel jealous of those times, for we should have liked the excitement of such argument. The old problems, such as the relation of science and religion, are still with us, and I believe present as difficult dilemmas as ever, but they are not often publicly discussed because of the limitations of specialization." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
"The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. ... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
"Our real situation is far more unsettling, our problems have much deeper roots, and an adequate response will require far more from us than just waiting for the business cycle to come back around to the " - Richard Heinberg
"With government debt, problems arise when required interest payments become a substantial fraction of tax revenues. Let" - Richard Heinberg
"Negroes, as they enter our culture, are going to inherit the problems we have, but with a difference. They are outsiders and they are going to know that they have these problems. They are going to be self-conscious; they are going to be gifted with a double vision, for, being Negroes, they are going to be both inside and outside of our culture at the same time. Every emotional and cultural convulsion that ever shook the heart and soul of Western man will shake them. Negroes will develop unique and specially defined psychological types. They will become psychological men, like the Jews . . . They will not only be Americans or Negroes; they will be centers of knowing, so to speak . . . The political, social, and psychological consequences of this will be enormous." - Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright