Quotes about puzzle (279 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Variant: But if I’m not the same, the next question is, ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!
Source: Alice in Wonderland

World

“I wonder if I've been changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

World , Feeling , Question , Thinking

“To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Personal correspondence (1839), as quoted in Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971) by Konstantin Mochulski, as translated by Michael A. Minihan, p. 17
General

Study , Faith , Time , Life

“The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

“I often liken the process of physics research to solving a jigsaw puzzle. As we put together pieces to form patches, a certain image of the overall picture emerges, but until the game is sufficiently progressed, we are not quite sure. I feel much the same way about the wealth of signs for new particles. We have patches that have been put together, but we are not quite sure how all pieces will fit together into a coherent whole. There are also certain pieces which do not seem to fit into any patches at all. For the most part, the experimental findings have not been completely unexpected, but there have been certain surprises that I, for one, had not foreseen. This is what makes particle physics exciting and tantalizing. At moments of despair and frustration, I feel as though somebody has scrambled two boxes of jigsaw puzzles for me to put together.”

Benjamin W. Lee (1935–1977) Korean American physicist

about his work as a particle physicist, at the Fermilab History and Archives Project: Benjamin Lee comments on HEP discoveries http://history.fnal.gov/significant_staff.html#Benjamin_Lee (May, 1976).

Way , Feeling , Game , Parting

“The world's a puzzle; no need to make sense out of it." - Socrates”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

World , Sense

“How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Change

“The days began to fly now, and yet each one of them was stretched by renewed expectations and swollen with silent, private experiences. Yes, time is a puzzling thing, there is something about it that is hard to explain.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain

Time , Flying

“It puzzles the will.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

“In fact, there is something puzzling about the Higgs mass we now do observe. It is generally known as the “hierarchy problem.” Since it is the Higgs mass that sets the scale for the masses of all other known elementary particles, one might guess that it should be similar to another mass that plays a fundamental role in physics, the so-called Planck mass, which is the fundamental unit of mass in the theory of gravitation. (It is the mass of hypothetical particles whose gravitational attraction for one another would be as strong as the electric force between two electrons separated by the same distance.) But the Planck mass is about a hundred thousand trillion times larger than the Higgs mass. So, although the Higgs particle is so heavy that a giant particle collider was needed to create it, we still have to ask, why is the Higgs mass so small?”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

"The Big Higgs Question" http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/07/09/big-higgs-question/, The New York Review of Books, 9 July 2012

Problem , Strong , Time

“It is as though a puzzle could be put together simply by shaking its pieces.”

Christian de Duve (1917–2013) Belgian biochemist, cytologist

Life Evolving : Molecules, Mind, and Meaning (2002)

“Hayek is a puzzle. Certainly he started out as one for me, now some twenty-odd years ago.”

Bruce Caldwell (economist) (1952) economic historian

Introduction
Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (2004)

“The last fact which knowledge can discover is that the world is a manifestation, and in every way a puzzling manifestation, of the universal will to live.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics

World , Way , Knowledge , Universe

“I was a little puzzled by the frenzy that I set off by what I thought was a pretty innocuous statement, which is that I am absolutely committed to ending the war. I'm not trying to dump on you guys, but I'm surprised at how finely calibrated every single word was measured. I wasn't saying anything that I hadn't said before, that I didn't say a year ago, or when I was a U. S. senator. If you look at our position, it's been very consistent. The notion that we have to get out carefully has been a consistent position. … I think what's happened is that the McCain campaign primed the pump with the press to suggest that somehow we were changing our policy when we hadn't and that just hasn't been the case. I've given no indication of a change in policy … I think John McCain's going to have a much harder time explaining how he is willing to perpetuate a presence in Iraq for 10, 20, 50 years.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Obama response to attack from McCain and his campaign on alleged Obama reversal on Iraq War; (5 July 2008) http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/06/campaign.wrap/index.html
2008

War , Guy , Thinking , Change

“A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"On Denoting", Mind, Vol. 14, No. 56 (October 1905), pp. 479–493; as reprinted in Logic and Knowledge: Essays, 1901–1950, (1956)
1900s

Thinking , Science

“Necessity is the mother of invention. I love solving things like that. Because there wasn't enough memory, thinking of an economical way to make the movements look right was like solving a puzzle, and I had a lot of fun.”

Shigeru Miyamoto (1952) Japanese video game designer and producer

Source: http://uk.wii.com/software/interviews/mario_kart/vol1/index.html

Love , Way , Thinking , Memory

“"One cave she wolf go too farther, and I wolf leaf her" he said to his fave rave horse. Of course the horse didn't answer, because as you know they cannot speak, least of all to a garlic eating, stinking, little yellow greasy fascist bastard catholic Spaniard. They soon made it up howevans and Jesus and wee Spastic were once morphia unitely in a love that knew no Suzie. The only thing that puzzled Jesus was why his sugarboot got so annoyed when he called her his little Spastic in public.”

John Lennon book A Spaniard in the Works

"A Spaniard In The Works" from A Spaniard In The Works (1965); this has sometimes been misquoted as if Lennon were speaking specifically about Jesus Christ, when in fact, it is part of the odd narration of an odd story with elements of satire, about a Spanish groom named "Jesus El Pifico".

Love , Wolf , Horse

“And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

As quoted in The Writings of Thomas Paine, edited by Moncure D. Conway, vol. 3 (1895), p. 252
1790s, Letter to George Washington (1796)

Life , Friendship , World

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!”

Peter Sellers (1925–1980) British film actor, comedian and singer

Mr. Strangelove (1999)

World

“You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Conversation of 1947 or 1948
Personal Recollections (1981)

“It could and must, be explained that in the civil war we destroyed the White Guards in order that they should not destroy the workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the destruction of human life - a puzzle the dialectical secret of which was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient sages.”

Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism

Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), Chapter three, p. 53

War , Secret , Problem , Life

“Thus, almost everything is imitation. The idea of The Persian Letters was taken from The Turkish Spy. Boiardo imitated Pulci, Ariosto imitated Boiardo. The most original minds borrowed from one another. Miguel de Cervantes makes his Don Quixote a fool; but pray is Orlando any other? It would puzzle one to decide whether knight errantry has been made more ridiculous by the grotesque painting of Cervantes, than by the luxuriant imagination of Ariosto. Metastasio has taken the greatest part of his operas from our French tragedies. Several English writers have copied us without saying one word of the matter. It is with books as with the fire in our hearths; we go to a neighbor to get the embers and light it when we return home, pass it on to others, and it belongs to everyone”

Voltaire book Letters on the English

"Lettre XII: sur M. Pope et quelques autres poètes fameux," Lettres philosophiques (1756 edition)
Variants:
He looked on everything as imitation. The most original writers, he said, borrowed one from another. Boyardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariofio Boyardo. The instruction we find in books is like fire; we fetch it from our neighbour, kindle it as home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
Historical and Critical Memoirs of the Life and Writings of M. de Voltaire (1786) by Louis Mayeul Chaudon, p. 348
What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
As translated in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2008), by James Geary, p. 373
Original: (fr) Ainsi, presque tout est imitation. L’idée des Lettres persanes est prise de celle de l’Espion turc. Le Boiardo a imité le Pulci, l’Arioste a imité le Boiardo. Les esprits les plus originaux empruntent les uns des autres. Michel Cervantes fait un fou de son don Quichotte; mais Roland est-il autre chose qu'un fou? Il serait difficile de décider si la chevalerie errante est plus tournée en ridicule par les peintures grotesques de Cervantes que par la féconde imagination de l'Arioste. Métastase a pris la plupart de ses opéras dans nos tragédies françaises. Plusieurs auteurs anglais nous ont copiés, et n'en ont rien dit. Il en est des livres comme du feu de nos foyers; on va prendre ce feu chez son voisin, on l’allume chez soi, on le communique à d’autres, et il appartient à tous.

Home , Painting , Imagination , Light

“Words were so puzzling. should mean a present just asshould mean to stick tacks in people.”

Beverly Cleary book Ramona the Pest

Source: Ramona the Pest

People

“People are so stupid. They think they've got the whole puzzle figured out, but they're really so far off.”

Laurie Faria Stolarz (1972) American writer

Source: Deadly Little Games

People , Stupidity , Thinking

“Life is messy. Would that every puzzle piece fell into place, every word was kind, every accident happy, but such is not the case. Life is messy”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror

Life , Happiness

“You don't understand,' she said, and there was a puzzling trace of resentment in her voice. 'Children never do. The love a parent has for a child, there's nothing else like it. No other love so consuming.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Love , Children , Understanding , Parent

“At night too, she puzzled the mystery of her desperate need of kindness. As other girls prayed for handsomeness in a lover, or for wealth, or for power, or for poetry, she had prayed fervently: let him be kind.”

Anaïs Nin book A Spy in the House of Love

Source: A Spy in the House of Love

Girl , Lovers , Night , Wealth

“Notice this rent in my garment; I am at a loss to explain its presence! I am even more puzzled by the existence of the universe.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 5, "The Pilgrims"
Source: Tales of the Dying Earth

Universe , Loss

“To her own heart it was a delightful affair, to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one, but to her reason, her judgment, it was completely a puzzle.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Source: Sense and Sensibility: The Screenplay

Imagination , Heart

“Drifting off to sleep, I thought about her. How nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sleep , Heart , Perfection

“What if the puzzle of the world was a shape you didn't fit into? And the only way to survive was to mutilate yourself, carve away your corners, sand yourself down, modify yourself to fit? How come we haven't been able to change the puzzle instead?”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

World , Way , Change

“Tyson! Thank the gods, Annabeth is hurt!"
"You thank the gods that she is hurt?" he asked, puzzled.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

God , Hurt

“Tall, aren't you?" she said.
"I didn't mean to be."
Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep

Thinking

“The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 1
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Truth

“Not every puzzle is intended to be solved. Some are in place to test your limits. Others are, in fact, not puzzles at all…”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“In the end we had the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptinesses mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Country

“It's Will," she said. "He's being absolutely ridiculous in the dining room."
Charlotte looked puzzled. "How is this different from him being totally ridiculous in the library or the weapons room or any of the other places he's usually ridiculous?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

People , Heart

“Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable," said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir's puzzled expression he added, "Emerson."

"Lake and Palmer?"

"Ralph and Waldo.”

Louise Penny book A Fatal Grace

Source: A Fatal Grace

“… while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Sign of the Four

Source: The Sign of Four

Mathematics

“Time is a funny thing. I was always puzzled with the way a single day could stretch itself out to the point of eternity in your mind, all while years melted down into the fraction of a second.”

Gloria Naylor book Mama Day

Source: Mama Day

Way , Time

“Because,” he said quietly as she stood up, “until you walked into it, this was an ordinary garden.”

Puzzled, Elizabeth tipped her head. “What is it now?”

“Heaven.”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer

Source: Almost Heaven

“We must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

World , Christ

“life is like a jigsaw puzzle, you have to see the whole picture, then put it together piece by piece!”

Terry McMillan book A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Source: A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Life

“Downworld?" Tessa echoed, puzzled. "Is that a place in London?"

"Never mind that," said Will. "I'm boasting of my investigative skills, and I would prefer to do it without interruption.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

“I can't imagine what possessed you to propose to me."
"Well that will give you something to puzzle over any time you can't sleep.”

Georgette Heyer (1902–1974) British historical romance and detective fiction novelist

Source: Behold, Here's Poison

Imagination , Sleep , Time

“But I'm really enjoying my retirement. I get to sleep in every day. I do crossword puzzles and eat cake.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Mortal Coil

Sleep

“With a sigh she reached into her pocket and drew out a small velvet bag, which upended on the table. Two gold rings fell out, landing with a soft clink. Simon looked at them puzzled. "You want to get married?”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“To love someone was not what she had expected. It was like falling from somewhere high up and breaking in half, and only one person having the secret to the puzzle of putting her back together.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Love , Secret , Personality

“The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.”

Daniel H. Pink book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Source: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Joy

“When it comes to God's existence, I'm not an atheist and I'm not an agnostic- I'm an acrostic, the whole thing puzzles me.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, Brain Droppings (1997)

God

“Nothing in this world happens without a reason. That we are all exactly where we are supposed to be, and that the pieces of the puzzle have a tendency to come together when you least expect it.”

Jane Green (1968) British writer

Source: The Beach House

World

“Your hand fits mine like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

“Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

“Now, young lady, I suppose you're here for a work assignment."
Work?" Tally said.
They both looked down at her puzzled expression, and Shay burst into laughter.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Laughter

“As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“I have moments like that alot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Universe

“Two or three angels
Came near to the earth.
They saw a fat church.
Little black streams of people
Came and went in continually.
And the angels were puzzled
To know why the people went thus,
And why they stayed so long within.”

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) American novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist

Source: Complete Poems of Stephen Crane

People , Angels

“Every relationship has a hard part at the beginning. This is our hard part. It's not like a puzzle piece where there's an instant fit. With relationships, you have to shape the pieces on each end before they go perfectly together.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Parting

“A mind is like a puzzle; you must unlock it to read its hidden secrets.”

Melissa de la Cruz book Masquerade

Source: Masquerade

Secret , Reading

“Each form of the sacrosanct was regarded by members of the culture which gave rise to it as a revelation of the Truth; at Byzantium it was not a mere hypothesis that was sponsored by the majesty of the Byzantine style. To us, however, these forms make their appeal as forms alone — in other words, as they would be were they the work of a contemporary (and, since this actually is unthinkable, they affect us in a puzzling manner); or else as so many grandiose vestiges of a faith that has died out. We look at them from outside; they are still emotive, but they are no longer true. Thus we deprive them of what was their most vital element; for a religious civilization that regarded what it revered as a mere hypothesis is inconceivable.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Part IV, Chapter V
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)

Truth , Faith

“He commenced a systematic search of the cabin; but his attention was soon riveted by the books which seemed to exert a strange and powerful influence over him, so that he could scarce attend to aught else for the lure of the wondrous puzzle which their purpose presented to him.
Among the other books were a primer, some child's readers, numerous picture books, and a great dictionary. All of these he examined, but the pictures caught his fancy most, though the strange little bugs which covered the pages where there were no pictures excited his wonder and deepest thought.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 7 : The Light of Knowledge

Books , Search

“The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the longshoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

Sex

“Though I was satisfied that I was on the verge of perhaps a magnificent find, probably one of the missing tombs that I had been seeking for many years, I was much puzzled by the smallness of the opening in comparison with those of other royal tombs in the valley.”

Howard Carter (1874–1939) British egyptologist

Diary, 5 November 1922.

“When conspiracies have governmental powers, they can usually cover up their guilt at the time and they often destroy evidence so thoroughly that later generations are left with a puzzle they can solve only partially or tentatively. We now know only that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was arranged by a conspiracy for the dual purpose of eliminating a political figure who was no longer useful and of exciting fresh animosity against the Southerners who had been conquered, and whose country had been destroyed, in the unconscionable war of aggression of which he had been the ostensible leader; but, aside from a few hirelings, the only person whom we can positively identify as a member of the conspiracy is Stanton, who was the Secretary of War in Lincoln’s cabinet, arranged many of the practical details, and was able, after the event, to silence key witnesses, although we can only guess what it was they knew that made it necessary to have them judicially murdered. And Stanton seems to have been only a local manager for principals whose identity we can only surmise.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Revised Historiography", Liberty Bell magazine (April 1980)
1970s, 1980s

War , Silence , Time , Personality

“(DVD introduction) Well, welcome to your very own DVD of me, DVB, and ‘Mind Control’. If you weren’t expecting me and thought you were buying Reginald Perrin, then press eject now before you begin vomiting. Otherwise, please, please ensure that you are sitting in an extreme level of comfort, preferably in pre-worn slippers and, I trust, with your extended family around you. If you have seen the film ‘Signs’ and would like to wear the pointy tin foil hats now would be a good time to put them on you can’t be too careful. Well, pphhh, goodness me, er, it’s been a meteoric rise over these last years. The money and sex are exhausting and I have you the viewer to thank. Thanks. We’ve put together some of the pieces from the specials and series in glistening digital format, each pixel hand picked and gently polished and brought to you in wide-sound, surround-screen enjoyment. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I’ll enjoy the royalties from this, which is enormously. If you don’t like it and HMV won’t take it back because you’ve got sticky all over it then the disc makes an excellent beer coaster or wheels for a space truck or can be immense fun just putting it on your finger and [waggling it], like that. But I hope you do like it. When I first started developing these techniques I had no idea that they were going to prove at all popular and for all my nancing about and staring I’m actually really excited to have a DVD out and can’t wait to go and find it in Discount Books & Puzzles next to the Dizzie Gillespie CD box sets and disappointing erotica. I hope you like it and if you do, please go and buy another one.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Money , Books , Family , Hope

“Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.”

Willa Cather book Shadows on the Rock

Shadows on the Rock (1931), Epilogue

“A reading test measures one's ability to read reading tests, and reading tests are in themselves… somewhat akin to the world of crossword puzzles or Scrabble or the game of twenty questions. Some people play these games well, and all praise is due them for their skill. But if we ask, What aspect of the world do they comprehend in doing these games well? the answer is, Only the world within the games themselves.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)

People , World , Game , Question

“Life is a beautiful struggle
People search through the rubble for a suitable hussle
Some people using their noodle
Some people using their muscle
Some people put it all together make it fit like a puzzle”

Talib Kweli (1975) American rapper

I try
Albums, The Beautiful Struggle (2004)

Life , People , Beauty , Search

“I have been so puzzled over the early labelling of personal construct theory as ‘cognitive’ that several years ago I set out to write another short book to make it clear that I wanted no part of cognitive theory.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

George A. Kelly. The Psychotherapeutic Relationship. 1965. p. 216

Books , Parting

“The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

Lila (1991)

World , Thinking

“The dull pulse-like beat started at eleven o’clock at night. It was a new kind of music called ‘rap’. It baffled Ananda even more than disco. He had puzzled and puzzled over why people would want to listen and even move their bodies to an angry, insistent onrush of words – words that rhymed, apparently, but had no echo or afterlife. It was as if they were an extension of the body: never had words sounded so alarmingly physical, and pure physicality lacks empathy, it’s machine-like.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Odysseus Abroad (2014)

People , Music , Night

“Would puzzle a convocation of casuists to resolve their degrees of consanguinity.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 8.

“Instruction tables will have to be made up by mathematicians with computing experience and perhaps a certain puzzle-solving ability. There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself.”

Alan Turing (1912–1954) British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist

"Proposed Electronic Calculator" (1946), a report for National Physical Laboratory, Teddington; published in A. M. Turing's ACE Report of 1946 and Other Papers (1986), edited by B. E. Carpenter and R. W. Doran, and in The Collected Works of A. M. Turing (1992), edited by D. C. Ince, Vol. 3.

“The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.”

William Zinsser (1922–2015) writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor

Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 21, A Writers Decisions: Organizing a Long Article, p. 254.

“Running became my way of solving this puzzle of what had happened to me. It was just me and the road.”

Jason P. Lester (1974) American triathlete and distance runner

Running on Faith: the Principles, Passion and Pursuit of a Winning Life (2010); as quoted in "First Read: Jason Lester’s Running on Faith" https://web.archive.org/web/20140726214009/http://lavamagazine.com/first-read-jason-lesters-running-on-faith/?cbg_tz=-60, LAVA Magazine (November 2, 2010).

Way

“School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like Feldwebel (sergeants). I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam. What I hated most was the competitive system there, and especially sports. Because of this, I wasn't worth anything, and several times they suggested I leave. This was a Catholic School in Munich. I felt that my thirst for knowledge was being strangled by my teachers; grades were their only measurement. How can a teacher understand youth with such a system?... from the age of twelve I began to suspect authority and distrust teachers. I learned mostly at home, first from my uncle and then from a student who came to eat with us once a week. He would give me books on physics and astronomy. The more I read, the more puzzled I was by the order of the universe and the disorder of the human mind, by the scientists who didn't agree on the how, the when, or the why of creation. Then one day this student brought me Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Reading Kant, I began to suspect everything I was taught. I no longer believed in the known God of the Bible, but rather in the mysterious God expressed in nature.”

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

Source: William Hermanns, Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983), First conversation, p. 8

God , Hate , Books , Youth

“The result will be points of quiescence—technically known as nodes—where the air's density varies not at all, and no sound is heard. Note the paradox here: either sphere alone creates a sound wave at this point; two spheres together add up to no sound there at all. Two sources can add up to give less than one. This is the essence of destructive interference. (When two sources are giving the same instruction, the resulting vibration bears not twice but four times the energy. This phenomenon, oxymoronically known as constructive interference, may seem puzzling.)”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Source: Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987), Ch.12 Light as Waves

Time

“A further justification for the study of philosophy is that for many people it can be a very pleasurable activity. There is something to be said for this defence of philosophy. Its danger is that it could be taken to be reducing philosophical activity to the equivalent of solving crossword puzzles.”

Nigel Warburton (1962) British author and lecturer

Philosophy : the basics (Fifth Edition, 2013), Introduction

People , Pleasure , Study

“Here I find a puzzle of great beauty: Canada works well in practice, but just doesn't work out in theory.”

B. W. Powe (1955) Canadian writer

Maxims and Enigmas, p. 29
Towards a Canada of Light (2006)

Beauty

“Shake (shift) parts of some of the letters in Voice (2). A-not-complete-unit, or a new unit. The elements in the 3 parts should neither fit nor not fit together. One would like not to be led. Avoid the idea of a puzzle which could be solved. Remove the signs of "thought". It is not the "thought" which needs showing... It is not interesting and should not be shown (to be) as interesting that the parts can be shifted. It was always true that they can be shifted. 'Duchamp's ironing board.'”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Does Teeny Duchamp have an ironing board?
Book B (sketchbook), c 1967: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 64
1960s

Idea , Parting

“Christ," he remarked, puzzled, "this is a dingy way to die.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. XII (p. 373)

Way , Christ

“Our science fails to recognize those special properties of life that make it fundamental to material reality. This view of the world—biocentrism—revolves around the way a subjective experience, which we call consciousness, relates to a physical process. It is a vast mystery and one that I have pursued my entire life. The conclusions I have drawn place biology above the other sciences in the attempt to solve one of nature’s biggest puzzles, the theory of everything that other disciplines have been pursuing for the last century. Such a theory would unite all known phenomena under one umbrella, furnishing science with an all-encompassing explanation of nature or reality.”

Robert Lanza (1956) American medical doctor

A New Theory of the Universe:Biocentrism builds on quantum physics by putting life into the equation, Spring, 2007, The American Scholar http://www.theamericanscholar.org/a-new-theory-of-the-universe/,

Life , World , Way , Nature

“As a means of variation from a normal type, sickness in childhood ought to have a certain value not to be classed under any fitness or unfitness of natural selection; and especially scarlet fever affected boys seriously, both physically and in character, though they might through life puzzle themselves to decide whether it had fitted or unfitted them for success.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life , Boy , Nature , Success

“It was the technique of a man who selected thoughts as one might select pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In due course they would be reassembled together so as to make a clear and coherent picture. At the moment the important thing was the selection, the separation.”

Agatha Christie book Third Girl

Third Girl (1966)

“Sheriff Bart [waking up a drunk Jim in jail]: Are we awake?
Jim "The Waco Kid": We don't know. Are we black?
Sheriff Bart: Yes we are.
Jim "The Waco Kid": Then we're awake, but we're very puzzled.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

Blazing Saddles

“In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, October 19, 2007, "Pelosi’s Armenian Gambit" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer101907.php3 at jewishworldreview.com.
2000s, 2007

Stupidity

“By the way, Mr. Premier: Have you ever noticed that all four of the greatest poets in the world are Muslim? And yet all the Muslims you meet are illiterate or covered head to toe in black burkas or looking for buildings to blow up? It’s a puzzle, isn’t it? If you ever figure these people out, send me an e-mail.”

Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger

The First Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

People , World , Way

“Paintings are complex puzzles in the twilight world between abstraction and figuration. I use the medium in a simple, unsophisticated way to express what I don't see expressed anywhere else.”

Stefan Szczesny (1951) German painter and sculptor

Mustique (2002)

World , Way , Painting

“I am very smart. But not as strong-hearted as all the workers on earth for he toils endlessly and does it all to feed his family while I do it merely for solving an impossible puzzle.”

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

Letter to his cousin Richard Einstein (October 1947)
1940s

Family , Strong , Heart

“Understanding music simply means not being irritated or puzzled by it.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 1 : The Frontiers of Nonsense

Music , Understanding

“Early in life, most of us probably observe an unhappy relationship between labor and wealth — to wit, the heavier the labor, the less the wealth.
The man doing heavy manual work makes less than the man who makes a machine work for him, and this man makes less than the man sitting at a desk. The really rich people, the kind who go around on yachts and collect old books and new wives, do no labor at all.
The economic reasons for dividing the money this way are clear enough. One, it has always been done that way; and two, it's too hard to change at this late date. But the puzzling question is why, since the money is parceled out on this principle, young people are constantly being pummeled to take up a life of labor.
In any sensible world, the young would be told they could labor if they wanted to, but warned that if they did so it would cost them.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Lost Labor Love" (p.170)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Life , Money , People , Books

“I listened to the sermon, and I remember complete astonishment because what they were talking about were things that were just crazy. It was communion time, where you eat this wafer and are supposed to be eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. My first impression was, "This is a bunch of cannibals they've put me down among!" For some time, I puzzled over this and puzzled over why they were saying these things, because the connection between what they were saying and reality was very tenuous. How the hell did Jesus become something to be eaten?
I guess from that time it was clear to me that religion was largely nonsense--largely magical, superstitious things. In my own teen life, I just couldn't see any point in adopting something based on magic, which was obviously phony and superstitious.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

The Humanist, Mar/Apr 1991

Life , Religion , Hell , Drink

“"There are two errors in the the title of this book." --A sourcebook of philosophical puzzles, paradoxes and problems, Robert M. Martin, p. 4,”

Sidney Morgenbesser (1921–2004) American philosopher

Books , Error , Problem

“I am looking at you,
You at him,
Kabir asks, how to solve
This puzzle —
You, he, and I?”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

Azfar Hussain translations

“Advised a young diplomat "to tell the truth, and so puzzle and confound his enemies."”

Henry Wotton (1568–1639) English ambassador

Attributed. E.g., Vol 24, Encyclopedia Britannica of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, page 721 https://books.google.com/books?id=_GlJAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA721&lpg=PA721&dq=truth+wotton+confound+advice&source=bl&ots=-cGk3UDLLj&sig=ltOR1xtI9WFic1JWKiFmIZ8Yce0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVkZCsj-jRAhXCyFQKHTmsCkAQ6AEIODAG#v=onepage&q=truth%20wotton%20confound%20advice&f=false (9th Ed. 1894).
Compare Mark Twain who, in Following the Equator, said "When in doubt, tell the truth" (which is often mis-quoted as containing an additional clause providing "it will confound your enemies and astound your friends").

Truth

“I had determined to go as far as declaring in abstruse and puzzling utterances the future causes of the "common advent", even those truly cogent ones that I have foreseen. Yet lest whatever human changes may be to come should scandalise delicate ears, the whole thing is written in nebulous form, rather than as a clear prophecy of any kind.”

Nostradamus (1503–1566) French apothecary and reputed seer

Letter from Salon to his son Cesar (March 1555) as translated by Peter Lemesurier http://www.propheties.it/nostradamus/letters/cesar.htm

Change , Future

“Schizophrenia--its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it--remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the "double bind"--a situation in which no matter what a person does, he "can't win."”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms.
Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland (1956) " Towards a theory of Schizophrenia http://www.psychodyssey.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/TOWARD-A-THEORY-OF-SCHIZOPHRENIA-2.pdf" In: Behavioral Science (1956) Vol 1, nr.4, pp.251-254

Communication , Nature , Personality

“Personally, I’ve always been of the sleek and minimalist design school: make sure the core play is consistent and strong, then let that idea play out against different environments and challenges, this tends toward focusing on bio-mechanical twitch responses, audio-visual awe, and leaning more toward general strategy and tactics development over specific puzzle solving.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Quoted in Brad Cook, "John Carmack: Making the Magic Happen" http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2009/02/johncarmack/ Apple.com

School , Idea , Strong , Personality