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.
“Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.”
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Scott Adams 86
cartoonist, writer 1957Related quotes
"The Big Problem Binge," The New York Times (1965-03-18)
December 2007 http://www.startribune.com/nation/12598281.html, in an interview Sunday on ABC's This Week. Greenspan suggested the government should boost support to homeowners facing the prospect of losing their homes because their mortgages are resetting to higher interest rates.
2000s
“You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.”
Variant: We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them
“Science never solves a problem without creating ten more”
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”