“To politicians, solved problems represent a dire threat — of unemployment and poverty. That's why no problem ever tackled by the government has ever been solved. What they want is lots of problems they can promise to solve, so that we'll keep electing them — or letting them keep their jobs in a bureaucracy metastasizing like cancer.”

Variant: Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Source: Confessions of a Philosopher (1997), p. 157
Context: As Voltaire once remarked, "It is the privilege of the real genius, especially one who opens up a new path, to make great mistakes with impunity." The Copernican revolution brought about by Kant was, I think, the most important single turning point in the history of philosophy. For that reason there has been, ever since, a watershed in understanding between those who have taken his work on board and those who have not. For a good many of the problems he uncovered, the solutions he put forward have not stood the test of time, but his uncovering of the problems remains the most illuminating thing a philosopher has ever done. Because of the fundamental character of these problems, and because Kant did not solve them, confronting them has been the most important challenge to philosophy ever since.

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

Part One, chapter 4, page 18
Why Government Doesn't Work (1995)

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Part III, Chapter 13, Man Vs. Machine, p. 170
2000s, How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

on his blackboard at the time of death in February 1988; from a photo in the Caltech archives http://archives.caltech.edu/pictures/1.10-29.jpg