“The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.”
The Unsettling of America : Culture & Agriculture (1996), p. 62.
Context: Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm — which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.
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Wendell Berry 189
author 1934Related quotes
Statement in Detroit, Michigan (10 November 1963).
Attributed
“One solution to one problem makes two problems.”
Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978
“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)
Source: 1980s, That Benediction is Where You Are (1985), p. 18
Context: From childhood we are trained to have problems. When we are sent to school, we have to learn how to write, how to read, and all the rest of it. How to write becomes a problem to the child. Please follow this carefully. Mathematics becomes a problem, history becomes a problem, as does chemistry. So the child is educated, from childhood, to live with problems — the problem of God, problem of a dozen things. So our brains are conditioned, trained, educated to live with problems. From childhood we have done this. What happens when a brain is educated in problems? It can never solve problems; it can only create more problems. When a brain that is trained to have problems, and to live with problems, solves one problem, in the very solution of that problem, it creates more problems. From childhood we are trained, educated to live with problems and, therefore, being centred in problems, we can never solve any problem completely. It is only the free brain that is not conditioned to problems that can solve problems. It is one of our constant burdens to have problems all the time. Therefore our brains are never quiet, free to observe, to look. So we are asking: Is it possible not to have a single problem but to face problems? But to understand those problems, and to totally resolve them, the brain must be free.
Source: Enigmas Of Chance (1985), Chapter 4, On Toast!, p. 93.
Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
