“The foolish thing was trying to solve the problem all by myself. But the deeper I get tangled up in this mass of dreams and memories the more I realize that emotional problems can't be solved as intellectual problems are.”
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
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Daniel Keyes47
American author 1927–2014Related quotes
“If you cannot solve the proposed problem, try to solve first a simpler related problem.”
George Pólya (1887–1985) Hungarian mathematician
Mathematical Methods in Science (1977), p.164
“Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems”
René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist
Nathan Seiberg (1956) American physicist
as quoted by Sandhya Ramesh in: [Interview: 'There's No Conflict Between Lack of Evidence of String Theory and Work Being Done on It', The Wire, Bengaluru, 7 January 2018, https://thewire.in/science/theres-no-conflict-lack-evidence-string-theory-work-done]
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.
“Death solves all problems — no man, no problem.”
Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
This actually comes from the novel Children of the Arbat (1987) by Anatoly Rybakov. In his later book The Novel of Memories ( In Russian http://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/auth/auth_pages.xtmpl?Key=18637&page=307) Rybakov admitted that he had no sources for such a statement. <br class="br">Misattributed
Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician
NYROCK: Interview with Chris Cornell, 1999-10-01 https://web.archive.org/web/20030919022841/http://www.nyrock.com/interviews/1999/cornell_int.asp, <br class="br">Euphoria Morning Era