John R. Erickson on the discipline of writing, the world of publishing, and (of course) dogs http://www.lonestarliterary.com/john-r.-erickson-061415.html (June 14, 2015)
Stopped in Our Tracks, Book Two: Excerpts from U.G.'s Dialogues (2005) by K. Chandrasekhar
“It’s easier to solve problems if you don’t have to live with the solutions.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)
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.
In page=89
Remembering Our Leaders: Mahadeo Govind Ranade by Pravina Bhim Sain
The Last Lecture (2008)
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: Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966), p. 1278
