Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
“It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them.”
as stated in 1796 before the National Institute of Sciences and Arts in Paris, concerning fossil elephants.
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Georges Cuvier 5
French naturalist, zoologist and paleontologist (1769–1832) 1769–1832Related quotes
“We cannot solve life's problems except by solving them.”
M. Scott Peck
(1936–2005) American psychiatrist
Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
Stanley Baldwin
(1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
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.
Laurence J. Peter
(1919–1990) Canadian eductor
Entry for September 24; as quoted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, ISBN 0880297689, p. 78
Peter's Almanac (1982)
Source: Philosophical Investigations
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Albert Einstein
(1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.21
Context: He fully knows His unchangeable essence, and has thus a knowledge of all that results from any of His acts. If we were to try to understand in what manner this is done, it would be the same as if we tried to be the same as God, and to make our knowledge identical with His knowledge. Those who seek the truth, and admit what is true, must believe that nothing is hidden from God; that everything is revealed to His knowledge, which is identical with His essence; that this kind of knowledge cannot be comprehended by us; for if we knew its method, we would possess that intellect by which such knowledge could be acquired.... Note this well, for I think that this is an excellent idea, and leads to correct views; no error will be found in it; no dialectical argument; it does not lead to any absurd conclusion, nor to ascribing any defect to God. These sublime and profound themes admit of no proof whatever... In all questions that cannot be demonstrated, we must adopt the method which we have adopted in this question about God's Omniscience. Note it.