“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”
Source: Discourse on Method
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René Descartes 47
French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist 1596–1650Related quotes
Broadcast from London (16 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 120-121.
1937
Context: When we look round and consider the state of the world to-day, we see on every side bewilderment and doubt... I am no pessimist; I believe that in the end the countries of the world will find peace and prosperity— but that road will be a long and a hard one. For such a journey... above all, there is need of leadership. No one country— no group of countries— is so qualified to provide that leadership as the British Empire... I say this with no idea that we are necessarily better than other people, but because of our experience. For we, the peoples of the Empire, in our relations with one another, have set an example of mutual co-operation in the solution of our problems, such as, I believe, no group of nations has ever before achieved. We have demonstrated to the world in actual practice that difficulties can be resolved by discussion as they cannot be resolved by force.
“If we can see our difficulties, there is a way of resolving them, or the hope of a way.”
The Glass Forest (1986)
“Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.”
"The Transcendent Function" http://books.google.com/books?id=L3bsAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Man+needs+difficulties+they+are+necessary+for+health%22&pg=PA73#v=onepage ("Die Transzendente Funktion") (1916)
Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (1969)
No. 1.
Seventy Resolutions (1722-1723)
Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 12
“Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.”
Source: Wings of Fire p. 90.
Aphorism 4
Les Caractères (1688), De la ville
Context: The town is divided into various groups, which form so many little states, each with its own laws and customs, its jargon and its jokes. While the association holds and the fashion lasts, they admit nothing well said or well done except by one of themselves, and they are incapable of appeciating anything from another source, to the point of despising those who are not initiated into their mysteries.
“All Gaul is divided into three parts”
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.
Book I, Ch. 1 http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caesar/gall1.shtml; these are the first words of De Bello Gallico, the whole sentence is "All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third." http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0448.phi001.perseus-lat1:1.1.1
De Bello Gallico