“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”

—  Isaac Asimov

Last update April 28, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them." by Isaac Asimov?
Isaac Asimov photo
Isaac Asimov 303
American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni… 1920–1992

Related quotes

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“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.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

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.

Albert Einstein photo

“You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant: We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them

Albert Einstein photo

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Albert Einstein photo

“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
Albert Einstein photo

“We cannot solve the problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"Einstein's famous saying in Copenhagen", as quoted in a FBIS Daily Report https://books.google.de/books?id=DfQTAQAAMAAJ&q=%22We+cannot+solve%22: East Europe (4 April 1995), p. 45
Disputed

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Ben Carson photo

“We've been conditioned to think that only politicians can solve our problems. But at some point, maybe we will wake up and recognize that it was the politicians who created our problems.”

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

Said in a Fox Business interview https://www.facebook.com/FoxBusiness/posts/weve-been-conditioned-to-think-that-only-politicians-can-solve-our-problems-but-/10153892947535238/ (February 9, 2016)

Richard Feynman photo

“The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. … No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

letter to Koichi Mano (3 February 1966); published in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman (2005), p. 198, 201
also quoted by Freeman Dyson in "Wise Man" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18350, The New York Review of Books (20 October 2005)
Context: The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. … No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it. You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself — it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

Norman Vincent Peale photo
Remy de Gourmont photo

Related topics