“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”

— H.L. Mencken

The portion after the second semicolon is widely paraphrased or misquoted. Two examples are "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" and "There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
1910s
Source: "The Divine Afflatus" in New York Evening Mail (16 November 1917); later published in Prejudices: Second Series (1920) and A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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H.L. Mencken281

American journalist and writer 1880–1956

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“All problems are unsolvable. The essence of the existence of a problem is that there is no solution. Looking for a fact means there is no fact. To think is not to know how to be.”

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“The theory is the result of listening to the problem. When the theory acquires a life of its own because some people like it more than the real world, all kinds of uninspiring, uninteresting things happen, so the key is both to listen to the problem and to study the theory. But always remember that just as much theory is bunk as there are buggy solutions. There is nothing more wrong with "theory" than "solutions" – both their quality and their applicability are orthogonal to their existence.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

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“Perhaps as important is the relation between the existence of solutions to a competitive equilibrium and the problems of normative or welfare economics.”

Gérard Debreu (1921–2004) French economist and mathematician

Arrow, Kenneth J., and Gerard Debreu. " Existence of an equilibrium for a competitive economy http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cp/p00b/p0087.pdf." Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1954): p. 265

“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”

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