Quotes about problems
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“Once a problem is solved, its simplicity is amazing.”

Paulo Coelho book The Pilgrimage

Source: The Pilgrimage

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems begin to look like nails. - Abraham Maslow”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

“You can't just throw people at all your problems, dear.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Source: Astonishing X-Men, Volume 2: Dangerous

People

“There would be a trial and there would be a judge. The only problem was, there could only be one sentence.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

“Houses are cellular walls; they keep our problems from bleeding into everyone else's.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Housing

“I used to have a drug problem, now I make enough money.”

David Lee Roth (1954) Rock vocalist; lead singer with Van Halen

Money

“My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

Women, Men

“Indecision may or may not be my problem.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Indecision

“If you cannot recognize the problem, there is no way that I could explain it to you."
He laughed, damn the man. "My goodness," he said, "that was an expert sidestep.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: An Offer From a Gentleman

Way

“Today’s young people want to know everything about everyone. They think talking about a problem will solve it. I come from a quieter generation. We understand the value of forgetting, the lure of reinvention.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

People, Understanding, Thinking, Forgetting

“No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.”

Naomi Wolf (1962) American writer

Beauty, Appearance, Personality

“The problem is that the people with the most ridiculous ideas are always the people who are most certain of them.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

The Decider (21 July 2007)

People, Idea

“The problem isn't to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at hand.”

Samuel R. Delany book Dhalgren

Source: Dhalgren

Love, Learning

“Here's your first problem," he said, pointing at a sentence. "'Religion is the opium of the people.' Well, I don't know about people, but I think you'll find that the opium of pirates is actual opium.”

Gideon Defoe (1975) British writer

Source: The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists

People, Religion, Thinking

“The problem in our society and in our schools is to inclulcate, without overdoing it, the notion of education, as in the Latin educere--to lead, to bring out what is in someone rather than merely to indoctrinate him/her from the outside. (89)”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

Education, School

“I've spent the last decade learning to stand firm and face my problems… or at least batter them until they're unrecognizable.”

Kelley Armstrong book Frostbitten

Source: Frostbitten

Learning

“Fenworth!'
Yes?'
You bore me with your prattle.'
Oh, regrettable that. Why don't you seek the company of someone who doesn't prattle? Seems like a good solution to your problem.”

Donita K. Paul (1950) American writer

Source: DragonSpell

“My problems are like waves - just as one disappears with a snarl and a hiss there’s another shaping up to knock me down.”

Fiona Wood (1958) British–Australian physician and plastic surgeon

Source: Six Impossible Things

“Be not dishearten'd -- Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet;
Those who love each other shall become invincible.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Love, Freedom

“Life is not easy. We all have problems-even tragedies-to deal with, and luck has nothing to do with it. Bad luck is only the superstitious excuse for those who don't have the wit to deal with the problems of life.”

Joan Lowery Nixon (1927–2003) American children's writer and journalist

Source: In The Face of Danger

Life, Bad luck

“Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Fear, Personality

“Trusting God completely means having faith that He knows what is best for your life. You expect Him to keep His promises, help you with problems, and do the impossible when necessary.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, God, Faith, Help

“In a perfect world everything would be either black or white, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

People, World, Thinking, Perfection

“Craig said the problem with things is that everyone is always comparing everyone with everyone”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Variant: the problem with things is that everyone is always comparing everyone with everyone and because of that, it discredits people...
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases.”

Grant Morrison book The Filth

Source: The Filth

Disease, Thinking

“This is the problem with forever friends. They know too much.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

“I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

“But that was the problem with having the answers. It was only after you gave them that you realized they sometimes weren't what people wanted to hear.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

People

“When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Dogs, Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“Swords can’t solve every problem.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

“when faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Understanding, Parting

“Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

“The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

"Competition as a crutch" http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/07/competition-as-a-crutch.html Seth's Blog (2012-07-16) <br class="br">Source: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Way

“Sometimes, life threw up problems that even the wisest, most trusted mentor couldn't solve for you. It was part of the pain of growing up.
And having to stand by and watch was part of being a mentor.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Siege of Macindaw

Life, Pain, Parting

“I have a problem with people who take the Constitution loosely and the Bible literally.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

People

“Victims recite problems, leaders provide solutions.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life
Variant: Victims recite problems. Leaders present solutions.

“A problem is something to solve,” Phillip says. “If there’s no solution, it’s not a problem, so stop treating it like one.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

“Pippa's laugh is bitter, tinged with tears. 'Ha! Why do girls think being beautiful will solve every problem? Being beautiful just creates problems. It's a misery. I wish I were someone else.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Beauty, Girl, Thinking, Tear

“Stop thinking all the time that you're in the way, that you're bothering the person next to you. If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have courage to complain, that's their problem.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

People, Way, Courage, Thinking

“People's fantasies are what give them problems. If you didn't have fantasies you wouldn't have problems because you'd just take whatever was there.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

People

“Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

God

“The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.”

Philip Gourevitch We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

Source: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

Memory, Evil, Cry

“Our problems started in Dallas, when the fire-breathing sheep destroyed the King Tut exhibit.”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

“You don't find happiness in the absence of problems. You find happiness in spite of problems.”

Andrew Matthews (1948) British writer

Source: Happiness Now!

Happiness

“I think you're the only person who gets me. When I'm with you, the world doesn't feel like a problem I can't figure out. Please come to the dance, because you're my music.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

World, Music, Feeling, Thinking

“Clary," he said. "You saved my life."
"I stabbed you. With a massive sword. You caught on fire."
His lips twitched imperceptibly. "Okay," he said. "So maybe our problems aren't like other couples.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Variant: I stabbed you. With a massive sword. You caught on fire."
His lips twitched, almost imperceptibly. "Okay, so maybe our problems aren't like other couples.
Source: City of Lost Souls

Life

“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

“Every time you come to the limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem-to be yourself!”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Capricorn

Source: Tropic of Capricorn

Time

“These problems are real, and you can't turn off real life. So I won't try. Instead, I'll give you a set of tools to help you deal with real life.”

Sean Covey (1964) author; business executive

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

Life, Help

“We run when we're scared, we run when we're ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.”

Christopher McDougall (1962) American journalist and writer

Source: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Time

“If everybody who had a gun just shot themselves there wouldn’t be a problem.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 226

“One problem with being a leader, is that even among your friends you are alone, for it is you -- and you alone -- to whom the others look for final guidance.”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society

“And if you decide not to read anymore, hey, no problem, because you're not the one I was waiting for anyway. But if you decide to read on, then guess what? You're my kind of time being and together we'll make magic!”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Time, Waiting, Reading

“Her problem wasn't she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn't a blonde and she wasn't dumb.”

Joyce Carol Oates Blonde

Source: Blonde

“A writer doesn’t solve problems. He allows them to emerge.”

Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990) Swiss author and dramatist

“That was the problem with having walls so hard and high and unscalable…. When they came down, they crumbled completely, shattering into nothingness.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Witchlight

“Some Westerners […] have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

History

“Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

“My father had taught me - mostly by example - that if a man wanted to be in charge of his life, he had to be in charge of his problems.”

Stephen King book Joyland

Source: Joyland

Life

“People are simply not willing to look at their problems honestly and admit that they have problems.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

People

“When God closes a door, he opens a window. Yeah. The problem was that this particular window opened off the tenth story, and he wasn't so sure God supplied parachutes.”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

Source: An Echo in the Bone

God

“As long as you're neurotic and crazy, he's great. But once he solves all your problems, he becomes the problem.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

“When you nag, you become the problem, an he deals with it by turning you out, but when you dont nag, he deals with the problem.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk

Feeling, Question

“The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Time

“Silence & smile are two powerful tools. Smile is the way to solve many problems & Silence is the way to avoid many problems.”

Iris Johansen (1938) Novelist

Smile, Way, Silence, For Men

“Maybe, it's not the distance that's the problem, but how you handle it.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom.”

Sandra Day O'Connor (1930) Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Learning, Time, Personality

“There's so many problems in our world, so much negativity. Don't worry about the darkness — turn on the light and the darkness automatically goes.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

On the Alex Jones Radio show, as quoted in "David Lynch Questions 9/11 On National U.S. Radio" in Prison Planet (25 January 2007)
Source: Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Context: There's so many problems in our world, so much negativity. Don't worry about the darkness — turn on the light and the darkness automatically goes. Ramp up the light of unity within — help do that for yourself, help do that for the world and then we're really doing something, we're doing something that brings that light of unity.

World, Light

“I was running from one problem or place to another, with no time left to study, or sleep, or just breathe. I felt pulled in all directions, fighting to keep all these obligations circling in the air above me. It was only a matter of time before something fell.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

Sleep, Study, Time, Fight

“The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.”

Dashiell Hammett book The Thin Man

Source: The Thin Man

“I'm not making a problem out of a personal question; I make of a personal question an absence of a problem.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Question, Personality

“This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.”

R. Scott Bakker book The Darkness That Comes Before

Source: The Darkness That Comes Before

Understanding

“Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you've got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn't your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)

Thinking

“Assume that every problem in your life is a lesson to make you stronger. Then you never feel like a victim.”

Andrew Matthews (1948) British writer

Source: Happiness Now!

Life, Feeling

“For my entire life I longed for love. I knew it was not right for me — as a girl and later as a woman — to want or expect it, but I did, and this unjustified desire has been at the root of every problem I have experienced in my life.”

Lisa See book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Source: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Love, Life, Girl

“If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.”

Eldridge Cleaver (1935–1998) American activist

Parting

“But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is. -Connor”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

People, World, Thinking, Perfection

“Believe it is possible to solve your problem. Tremendous things happen to the believer. So believe the answer will come. It will.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

“But the problem is to make the soul into a monster”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Soul

“The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions. The door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed. Or that lovely poem that didn't get written because someone knocked on the door.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Love, Life, Marriage, Learning

“I'm smart but not enough--just smart enough to have problems.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Variant: I'm young, but I'm already screwing up my life. I'm smart but not enough -- just smart enough to have problems.
Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“I'm not sure if I know any 'functional' families, if functional means a family without difficult times and members who don't have a full range of problems.”

David Sheff Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

Source: Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

Family, Time

“Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Source: Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Women, Men

“And when you'd finished running you'd be thousands of miles away from people who love you and your problem would still be there except you'd have nobody to help you.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

Love, People, Help