Quotes about solution
page 3

“In sharp contrast (with the traditional social planning) the systems design approach seeks to understand a problem situation as a system of interconnected, interdependent, and interacting issues and to create a design as a system of interconnected, interdependent, interacting, and internally consistent solution ideas.”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Designing Social Systems in a Changing World (1996), p. 46; as cited in: Charles François (2004), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics. p. 164

Idea, Understanding, Problem

“I am heartbroken to say that the youth of the country doesn’t deserve us. I am here to hear who has a word of solace and point of solution of the problems that the nation is facing. Is it only votes that matter? Is it just us and them? Are we not simplifying matters by breaking up the country in two parts—us and them?”

Tathagata Satpathy (1956) Indian politician

In a Lok Sabha speech, on the death of Rohith Vemula and the JNU sedition debate, as quoted in " Stormy debate deepens divide in Parliament http://www.livemint.com/Politics/NcrHnh4YEodDfCn036LcxM/Stormy-debate-deepens-divide-in-Parliament.html" Live Mint (25 February 2015)

Youth, Problem, Parting, Country

“I don't suppose any first-class work in science is done now outside of the war work … Of course … science has fallen into discredit. It has brought no solution to our human problems, and has added greatly to our engines of destruction in this war. Not that science is to blame for this misuse, but people judge by results, and by that standard science has a heavy account to liquidate. Science so far has had far too much to do with the things of sense and of matter, and the things of the spirit have been by-passed.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

As quoted by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 395

War, People, Problem, Sense

“We have already various treatises on Mechanics, but the plan of this one is entirely new. I intend to reduce the theory of this Science, and the art of solving problems relating to it, to general formulae, the simple development of which provides all the equations necessary for the solution of each problem. I hope that the manner in which I have tried to attain this object will leave nothing to be desired. No diagrams will be found in this work. The methods that I explain require neither geometrical, nor mechanical, constructions or reasoning, but only algebraical operations in accordance with regular and uniform procedure. Those who love Analysis will see with pleasure that Mechanics has become a branch of it, and will be grateful to me for having thus extended its domain.”

Joseph Louis Lagrange book Mécanique analytique

Mécanique analytique (1788) as quoted by E. W. Hobson, Mathematics, from the points of view of the Mathematician and of the Physicist (1912) an address delivered to the Mathematical and Physical Society of University College London, p.13. https://books.google.com/books?id=H7Y_AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA13

Love, Pleasure, Hope, Art

“Certain changes have been going on in business practice which are destined, I believe, to alter our thinking fundamentally. I think this is a contribution which business is going to make to the world, and not only to the business world, but eventually to government and international relations. Men may be making useful products, but beyond this, by helping to solve the problems of human relations, they are perhaps destined to lead the world in the solution of those great problems of coordination and control upon which our future progress must depend.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxviii

Men, World, Business, Problem

“In short, the greatest contribution to real security that science can make is through the extension of the scientific method to the social sciences and a solution of the problem of complete avoidance of war.”

Edward Condon (1902–1974) physicist

in Science, Vol. 107, June 25, 1948, p. 665

War, Problem, Science

“This paucity of actors on the stage reflects the liturgical roots of Greek theater, which continued to stick close to its religious origins. … [A] machine, called the mēchanē, was a sort of crane that swung an actor playing a god over the parapet of the skēnē and out above the stage (thus the Latin phrase deus ex machina for a solution from nowhere, an unforeseen answer to prayers).”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.IV The Politician and the Playwright: How to Rule

God

“[The George E. P. Box paper Fitting empirical data (1960) is] a mature exposition of an important branch of statistics, to which the author has made great contributions. One feature of particular interest is practical discussion of genuinely nonlinear fitting problems and their solution with the help of tact and a special, publicly available, IBM-704 program. Another is insightful comments on the role of prior distributions in statistics.”

Leonard Jimmie Savage (1917–1971) American mathematician

Leonard Jimmie Savage in 1960s; cited in: JOC/EFR (2006) " George Edward Pelham Box http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Box.html" at history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk, Nov 2006.

Problem, Help, Box

“The day will come when the two-state solution collapses and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights. As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished. The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us, because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents.”

Ehud Olmert (1945) Israeli politician, prime minister of Israel

Financial Times (30 NOV 2007)

Democracy, Support

“When I asked Bhutto what he thought of Assad, he described the Syrian leader as “The Levanter.” Knowing that, like himself, I was a keen reader of thrillers, the Pakistani Prime Minister knew that I would get the message. However, it was only months later when, having read Eric Ambler’s 1972 novel The Levanter that I understood Bhutto’s one-word pen portrayal of Hafez Al-Assad. In The Levanter the hero, or anti-hero if you prefer, is a British businessman who, having lived in Syria for years, has almost “gone native” and become a man of uncertain identity. He is a bit of this and a bit of that, and a bit of everything else, in a region that is a mosaic of minorities. He doesn’t believe in anything and is loyal to no one. He could be your friend in the morning but betray you in the evening. He has only two goals in life: to survive and to make money… Today, Bashar Al-Assad is playing the role of the son of the Levanter, offering his services to any would-be buyer through interviews with whoever passes through the corner of Damascus where he is hiding. At first glance, the Levanter may appear attractive to those engaged in sordid games. In the end, however, the Levanter must betray his existing paymaster in order to begin serving a new one. Four years ago, Bashar switched to the Tehran-Moscow axis and is now trying to switch back to the Tel-Aviv-Washington one that he and his father served for decades. However, if the story has one lesson to teach, it is that the Levanter is always the source of the problem, rather than part of the solution. ISIS is there because almost half a century of repression by the Assads produced the conditions for its emergence. What is needed is a policy based on the truth of the situation in which both Assad and ISIS are parts of the same problem.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Like Father, Like Son http://www.aawsat.net/2015/02/article55341622/opinion-like-father-like-son, Ashraq Al-Awsat (February 20, 2015).

Life, Money, Truth, Game

“The man had declared, with some justification, that the world was going to hell in a handbasket, and then gone on to claim that the only solution lay in returning to the Good Old Moral Values of the glorious past.
Unable to stand any more, Malcolm had demanded why, if those values were so marvellous, the people who paid lip-service to them had involved mankind in two world wars with all their accoutrements from poison gas to atom-bombs.”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 4 (p. 31)

War, People, World, Hell

“I start off on the canvas and, little by little, it imposes its own solution. But that solution is not easy to find.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“Learning to cherish others is the best solution to our daily problems, and it is the source of all our future happiness and good fortune.”

Kelsang Gyatso (1931) Tibetan writer and lama

Modern Buddhism: The Path of Compassion and Wisdom (2011)

Happiness, Problem, Learning, Future

“My feeling is that Darwinism is only at best a partial solution, and an extremely dangerous partial solution. I would say, based on the little I know, Darwinism explains microevolution within species quite well. As to its broader consequence and implications, I don't think it explains individual species evolution at all well.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Science and Society: March 2008, ABC Science and Society: Ben Stein Holds Court, 31 March 2008, 2008-04-18 http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2008/03/index.html,

Feeling, Thinking

“We believe that the only prudent way forward and the solution is for Waheed to resign and the speaker of parliament to take over the government until elections are over.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

Quoted on BBC News, "Maldives crisis: Nasheed urges President Waheed to quit" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24605100, October 21, 2013.

Way

“In proactive problem solving we specify where we want to go, and we try to get there. Although such an approach does not eliminate the possibility of overlooking relevant consequences of our solutions, it reduces the probability of doing so. The more ultimate the desired outcome we specify, the more likely we are to consider the intermediate and long-run consequences of our immediate actions. The more immediate the source of dissatisfaction we try to get rid of, the less likely we are to take account of relevant consequences. Therefore, the chances of overlooking relevant consequences are minimized when we formulate a problem in terms of approaching one or more ideals.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

As cited in: Problem Solving & Goal Setting blog, 24 October 2010.
1970s, The Art of Problem Solving, 1978

Problem, Chance

“This is the largest Republican majority in the history of the State and I am humbled by the outpouring of support I have received. I am honored to have been elected to serve as the Majority Leader and I am looking forward to working toward making this State a better place to make a living and raise a family. I believe Missourians are tired of failed policies out of Washington DC and are looking for more common sense solutions here in Missouri, I believe this majority can deliver them.”

Todd Richardson (1976) American politician

State Rep. Todd Richardson to Serve as Majority Floor Leader for 98th General Assembly http://www.richardsonformissouri.com/richardson-elected-floor-leader/ (November 5, 2014)

Family, History, Support, Sense

“The intellectually aggressive hedgehogs knew one big thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that big thing to “cover” new cases; the more eclectic foxes knew many little things and were content to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world.”

Philip E. Tetlock (1954) American political science writer

About prediction and forecasting. Fox commented that "psychologist Philip Tetlock (following the lead of Isaiah Berlin), divided the world of political forecasters into hedgehogs and foxes." <br class="br">Source: Justin Fox. " How to Be Bad at Forecasting https://hbr.org/2012/05/how-to-be-bad-at-forecasting.html," in Harvard Business Review, May 11, 2012.

World, Change

“The solution of important problems may be delayed because the requisite tools are not perceived. Or the availability of certain tools may lead to an awareness of problems, important or not, that can be solved with their help.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

Source: Three Essays (1957), p. 170

Problem, Help

“My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target. The best example of this was the Apollo project in the United States.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 164.

Problem

“At the moment of greatest fear, the best solution is to go boldly and without hesitation.”

Robert Ferrigno (1947) American writer

Prayers For The Assassin (2006)

Fear

“You know, my dear Lahousen, the students of history will not need to trouble their heads after this war, as they did after the last, to determine who was guilty of starting it. The case is, however, different when we consider guilt for prolonging the war. I believe that the other side have now disarmed us of the last weapon with which we could have ended it. 'Unconditional surrender', no, our generals will not swallow that. Now I cannot see any solution.”

Wilhelm Canaris (1887–1945) German admiral, head of military intelligence service

To General Erwin Lahousen. Quoted in "Admiral Canaris - Chief of Intelligence" - Page 163 by Ian Colvin - 2007

War, History

“There's no solution except to break the power of Chiang Kai-shek by capturing Nanking. That is what I must do.”

Iwane Matsui (1878–1948) Japanese general

Quoted in "Tennou no guntai to Nankin jiken" by Yoshida Hiroshi - 1998 Aoki shoten, page 71.

“THEY who are acquainted with the present state of the theory of Symbolical Algebra, are aware, that the validity of the processes of analysis does not depend upon the interpretation of the symbols which are employed, but solely upon the laws of their combination. Every system of interpretation which does not affect the truth of the relations supposed, is equally admissible, and it is thus that the same process may, under one scheme of interpretation, represent the solution of a question on the properties of numbers, under another, that of a geometrical problem, and under a third, that of a problem of dynamics or optics. This principle is indeed of fundamental importance; and it may with safety be affirmed, that the recent advances of pure analysis have been much assisted by the influence which it has exerted in directing the current of investigation.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1840s, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, 1847, p. ii: Lead paragraph of the Introduction

Truth, Law, Question, Problem

“These computing machines had already been designed, and some built, by {[w|Vannevar Bush}}, Norbert Wiener, and others, and were almost ready-made for the job. These scientists, as well as others such as von Neumann, Shannon and Bigelow, were in a position to see that machines of an electronic kind were ideally suited to carry out the whole of the operations of range-finding and location without any human intervention whatever.
These electronic computing machines were already developed to a very high degree of efficiency for the solution of mathematical equations, and some technical difficulties had led to the suggestion that a process of scanning, similar to that used in television, might be incorporated into the computer. Another innovation was the use of binary notation rather than decimal notation as in the early Harvard Mark I computer.”

Frank Honywill George (1921–1997) British psychologist

Source: The Brain As A Computer (1962), p.18

Mathematics

“The fundamental thesis of ordinary conventionalism, represented for instance by Poincare, states that there are problems which cannot be solved by appeal to experience unless one introduces a certain convention, since only such a convention, together with experimental data, makes it possible to solve the problem in question. The judgements which combine to make up such a solution are thus not forced on us by empirical data alone, but their adoption depends partly on our recognition, since the said convention which co-determines the solution of the problem can be arbitrarily changed by us so that as a result we obtain different judgements.
In the present paper it is my intention to make that thesis of ordinary conventionalism more general and more radical. Namely, we want to formulate and to prove the theorem that not only some, but all the judgements which we accept and which combine to make up our image of the world are not univocally determined by empirical data, but depend on the choice of the conceptual apparatus by means of which we make mappings of those empirical data. We can, however, choose this or that conceptual apparatus, which will change our whole image of the world.”

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963) Philosopher, logician

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, "Das Weltbild und die Begriffsapparatur", in Erkenntnis, 1934, Vol. 4, p. 259; as cited in: Schaff (1962;81-82)

World, Question, Problem, Change

“They learn about the kinds of creativity that leads to visionary solutions”

Roger Smith (executive) (1925–2007) CEO

Attributed to Roger Smith in: Seyhan N. Ege et al. (1997) " The university of Michigan undergraduate chemistry curriculum 1. philosophy, curriculum, and the nature of change. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bcoppola/publications/21.%20p74-83.pdf" Journal of Chemical Education, 74(1), p. 75 <br class="br">S.N. Edge is quoting here Roger B. Smith, then Chairman of General Motors Corporation, who was speaking in October 1985 at the University of Michigan about the question "What is a liberal art?"

Learning

“Last year, the President promised he would use his pen and phone to ignore the legislative branch and push through his agenda by executive fiat. We have witnessed one executive power grab after another, setting a dangerous precedent and eroding the constitutional balance set forward by our Founders. As the President himself once said, elections have consequences. The most recent one being he must work with the Republican-controlled Congress, rather than spout recycled, failed ideas from past speeches. Americans are looking for leadership. They want solutions.”

Trey Gowdy (1964) American politician

Gowdy Statement on State of the Union Address https://gowdy.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/gowdy-statement-state-union-address (January 20, 2015)

Idea, Past

“Now one may ask, How could a Christian philosophy have something over a non-Christian philosophy, if it does not reach to a higher level of solutions, if it cannot get handy answers, if the problems and questions are still there? Well, perhaps a greater truth could be present in its ability to see the world in its truly mysterious character, in its inexhaustablity. It could even be the case that here, in the very experience of being as a mystery, that it is not to be grasped in the hand as a "well-rounded truth" — herein is reality more deeply and truly grasped than in any transparent system that may charm the mind of the student with its clarity and simplicity. And this is the claim of Christian philosophy: to be truer, precisely because of its recognition of the mysterious character of the world.
In no way, then, does philosophy become easier. Plato appears to have discovered and felt that too — if a certain interpretation of Plato is correct, maintaining that Plato understood philosophy to be something tragic for this reason, that it must constantly have recourse to mythos, since the teaching of philosophy can never close itself into a system.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 127–128
The "interpretation of Plato" referred to is that of Gerhard Krüger, Einsicht und Leidenschaft (Frankfurt, 1939), p. 301.

Truth, World, Way, Question

“As with the rest of Phoebe’s species, Julie must not let her become dependent upon supernatural solutions, trading one addiction for another.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 7 (p. 133)

Dependency

“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.

“A rational, humane solution—for Gelvri, as Elgran Vrai, believed rationality and humaneness tautologies, different names for the same thing.”

Michael Bishop (1945) American writer

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 14, “Denouement: Ascent to the Acropolis” (p. 266)

“…I do not say any form which you construct this way is a good form, or must lead to a good solution; but there are forms which can lead to good solutions, and of course that is only the first link in a whole chain of investigations, and the other links in the investigation, model tests, measuring of the first structure, or a model test in scale 1:1 as we have it out here, these are of primary importance. So the engineer[‘s] problem is remaining all the same, but it is the first link, here, the shaping which has been lacking up to now, and this method can lead to a very nice solution.”

Heinz Isler (1926–2009) engineer

First Congress of the International Association of Shell Structures (now IASS), Madrid (1959) discussion following presentation of his paper paper ‘New Shapes for Shells’, as quoted by John Chilton, "39 etc… : Heinz Isler’s infinite spectrum of new shapes for shells" (2009) Proceedings of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS) Symposium 2009, Valencia, Evolution and Trends in Design, Analysis and Construction of Shell and Spatial Structures, 28 September – 2 October 2009, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain, eds. Alberto Domingo, Carlos Lazaro.

Way, Problem

“People get a sense that something is really wrong in government and in our culture. There is a corruption, not only in politics, but of spirit as well, when people are so quick to be violent with one another. I think everybody would like to be able to find a solution to make things better. We have the desire to reform inside of us, and we get frustrated because we don’t know how to change things, even if it comes to our own behavior. Sometimes you get frustrated because you don’t know how to stop that thing that you know is either hurtful to yourself or someone else.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview at Collider.com (6 February 2011) http://collider.com/jennifer-beals-interview-the-chicago-code/74802/.

People, Behavior, Thinking, Sense

“People who been told that the Reform Party consists of well-meaning simpletons mouthing naive solutions to complex problems should study Harper's speeches on behalf of Reform.”

Preston Manning book The New Canada

Source: The New Canada (1992), Chapter Eight, The Founding Assembly, p. 149

People, Problem, Study

“Whether or not there exists a solution to problems troubles only a minority; that the emotions have no outcome, lead to nothing, vanish into themselves — that is the great unconscious drama, the affective insolubility everyone suffers without even thinking about it.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Problem, Thinking, Suffering

“This article was written for those who believe that the spectrum of opinion is more like a circle than a straight line. It was written for those who believe that each of the different perspectives on terrorism has something to add to the whole. In this view, coming up with a solution to terrorism is not a matter of adopting "correct" political beliefs. It is, rather, a matter of learning to listen – really, listen – to everyone in the circle of humankind. And to take their insights into account. For everyone has a true and unique perspective on the whole. Fifteen years ago the burning question was, How radical are you? Hopefully someday soon the question will be, How much can you synthesize? How much do you dare to take in?”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: New Options for America (1991), Chapter 19, "Twenty-eight Ways of Looking at Terrorism," pp. 167–68.

Question, Learning

“Solution of this knot by any other conceptions of freedom and determinism than these, there plainly can be none. But the solution is secure if God and other spirits are alike rational, simply by their inner and self-active nature; in other words, if the solution is by spontaneous harmony from within, and not by productive and executive domination from without”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.327-8

God, Nature, Freedom

“There have been times when I've thought of suicide but with my luck it'd probably be a temporary solution.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Also found in "Quotations According to Woody Allen" http://books.google.com/books?id=kd41AQAAIAAJ&q=%22quotations+according%22#search_anchor from the New York Times, 1 December 1975.

Suicide, Time

“After centuries of relative silence and enforced acceptance, we adapted a technique of exposing the problem by direct and dramatic methods. We had confidence that when we awakened the nation to the immorality and evil of inequality, there would be an upsurge of conscience followed by remedial action. We knew that there were solutions and that the majority of the nation were ready for them. Yet we also knew that the existence of solutions would not automatically operate to alter conditions. We had to organize, not only arguments, but people in the millions for action. Finally we had to be prepared to accept all the consequences involved in dramatizing our grievances in the unique style we had devised.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

People, Confidence, Problem, Silence

“Preliminary ideas are often weak and impure, and need to be driven through a forge in order to become powerful, workable solutions.”

Tim Hurson (1946) Creativity theorist, author and speaker

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking

Idea

“What happened was that Nigerians decided that they would like to put a final solution to Igbo problem. They unleashed a massacre. We tried to contain them; they unleashed a second wave more vicious than the previous one. I looked upon the situation, did the best I could for our people who were scattered all over Nigeria. I said okay, this is our boundary. If you can find your way back to within this area, whatever there is within this area would be shared amongst all of us. You have as much right here as anybody who happened to be here. That actually is another way of seeing the declaration of Biafra and they had a goal and aim in their flight. The other thing to bear in mind is that we didn’t really wage a war. What we did was resist Gowon’s coup d’état and I hope that he would enter the Guinness Book of Records as the person who has waged a coup longer than any body else because the whole three years, he was actually trying to legitimize his coup.”

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933–2011) Nigerian politician and military leader

9 July, 2001, as quoted by Rudolph Okonkwo, My Last Interview With Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu - Rudolf Okonkwo http://saharareporters.com/column/my-last-interview-dim-chukwuemeka-ojukwu-rudolf-okonkwo, Sahara Reporters (26 November, 2011)

War, People, Books, Hope

“Our generation can change this. We know what the problems are and we know what the solutions are, but we have to demand that our elected officials and business leaders take action. At the federal and state level, we have to fight efforts to repeal equal pay laws. We have to support increases in the minimum wage. And we have to demand that the United States join our global competitors in giving workers paid leave. All these issues affect our individual financial health and the strength of our collective economy.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

CNN, (April 17, 2012).
Articles

Health, Law, Business, Support

“Conservatives believe that some problems have no solution, that they can only be mitigated at best. Liberals believe that most every problem has a government solution.”

Mike Rosen (1944) American political pundit

Rocky Mountain News column, 2000

Problem

“I have seen the astrolabe called Zuraqi invented by Abu Sa'id Sijzi. I liked it very much and praised him a great deal, as it is based on the idea entertained by some to the effect that the motion we see is due to the Earth's movement and not to that of the sky. By my life, it is a problem difficult of solution and refutation. […] For it is the same whether you take it that the Earth is in motion or the sky. For, in both cases, it does not affect the Astronomical Science. It is just for the physicist to see if it is possible to refute it.”

Al-Biruni (973–1048) Persian scholar and polymath

[citation needed]

Life, Idea, Problem, Science

“This is not like any other policy issue. This will determine the nature of our country over the next decades in how we settle this. Either we’re going to add to the anxiety and all this hate-filled back and forth, or we find an economic solution for this country moving forward.”

Dave Brat (1964) American economist and professor at Randolph–Macon College

Rep. Dave Brat: 2018 DACA Amnesty Fight ‘Will Determine the Nature of Our Country’ — ‘If We Fail on This, Just Picture Europe’ http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/12/30/rep-dave-brat-2018-daca-amnesty-fight-will-determine-the-nature-of-our-country-if-we-fail-on-this-just-picture-europe/ (December 30, 2017)

Hate, Nature, Country

“I am always surprised that the information profession, so quick to sing the virtues of literature search for its customers, pays so little attention to its own history. I have been told: “our problems are different from those of the past”. It is not so the problems are often the same, only the technical means available for solution may be new. The thinking and experience of the past can often shed light on the present.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

B.C. Vickery (2008), "Emanuel Goldberg and his knowledge machine by Michael Buckland". Book review, Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 40(2), p. 144.

History, Search, Literature, Problem

“I am fully assured, that no general method for the solution of questions in the theory of probabilities can be established which does not explicitly recognize, not only the special numerical bases of the science, but also those universal laws of thought which are the basis of all reasoning, and which, whatever they may be as to their essence, are at least mathematical as to their form.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

George Boole, " Solution of a Question in the Theory of Probabilities http://books.google.nl/books?id=9xtDAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA32" (30 November 1853) published in The London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science‬‎ (January 1854), p. 32 <br class="br">1850s

Law, Mathematics, Question, Universe

“Ever since 1953, when Russell Kirk produced its intellectual coat of arms, conservatism has been "what Edmund Burke wrote." This is the equivalent of Arthur Danto’s institutional theory of art—art is whatever the art world says it is. But it’s also a cop-out. Instead of analyzing conservatism in an Aristotelian way, instead of asking how we use the term in real life, we just describe Burke. In the process, don’t we risk fleeing into what Tanenhaus calls an "alternative universe"? If conservatives are "glaringly disconnected from the realities now besetting America," as Tanenhaus says, why is the solution to be more like a man who wore a powdered wig? Liberals have problems of their own, but, to their credit, they don’t sit around debating whether Hillary Clinton or John Edwards is the "real Rousseauian."”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Conservatism Turned Upside Down: Sam Tanenhaus' Critique of Conservative Reason (2009)

Life, World, Art, Way

“Eichmann, much less intelligent and without any education to speak of, at least dimly realized that it was not an order but a law which had turned them all into criminals. The distinction between an order and the Führer's word was that the latter's validity was not limited in time and space, which is the outstanding characteristic of the former. This is also the true reason why the Führer's order for the Final Solution was followed by a huge shower of regulations and directives, all drafted by expert lawyers and legal advisors, not by mere administrators; this order, in contrast to ordinary orders, was treated as a law. Needless to add, the resulting legal paraphernalia, far from being a mere symptom of German pedantry and thoroughness, served most effectively to give the whole business its outward appearance of legality.And just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, "Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: "Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it — the quality of temptation.”

Hannah Arendt book Eichmann in Jerusalem

Source: Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Ch. VIII.

People, Education, Law, Intelligence

“The physicist needs a facility in looking at problems from several points of view. The exact analysis of real physical problems is usually quite complicated, and any particular physical situation may be too complicated to analyze directly by solving the differential equation. But one can still get a very good idea of the behavior of a system if one has some feel for the character of the solution in different circumstances. Ideas such as the field lines, capacitance, resistance, and inductance are, for such purposes, very useful. … On the other hand, none of the heuristic models, such as field lines, is really adequate and accurate for all situations. There is only one precise way of presenting the laws, and that is by means of differential equations. They have the advantage of being fundamental and, so far as we know, precise. If you have learned the differential equations you can always go back to them. There is nothing to unlearn.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume II; lecture 2, "Differential Calculus of Vector Fields"; section 2-1, "Understanding physics"; p. 2-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

Law, Way, Behavior, Feeling

“Because of experimental science we know a very large number of things about the natural world of which our predecessors were ignorant. In the great books we can observe the birth of science, applaud the development of the experimental technique, and celebrate the triumphs it has won. But we can also note the limitations of the method and mourn the errors that its misapplication has caused. We can distinguish the outlines of those great persistent problems that the method … may never solve and find the clues to their solutions offered by other methods and other disciplines.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Books, World, Error, Birth

“Many of the greatest masters of the mathematical sciences were first attracted to mathematical inquiry by problems relating to numbers, and no one can glance at the periodicals of the present day which contain questions for solution without noticing how singular a charm such problems still continue to exert. The interest in numbers seems implanted in the human mind, and it is a pity that it should not have freer scope in this country. The methods of the theory of numbers 271 are peculiar to itself, and are not readily acquired by a student whose mind has for years been familiarized with the very different treatment which is appropriate to the theory of continuous magnitude; it is therefore extremely desirable that some portion of the theory should be included in the ordinary course of mathematical instruction at our University. From the moment that Gauss, in his wonderful treatise of 1801, laid down the true lines of the theory, it entered upon a new day, and no one is likely to be able to do useful work in any part of the subject who is unacquainted with the principles and conceptions with which he endowed it.”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 467 : On the theory of numbers

Mathematics, Question, Problem, Universe

“Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“I was reading of chaos that contained order; of information as the primal, creative force; of systems that, by design, fell apart so they could renew themselves; and of invisible forces that structured space and held complex things together. These were compelling, evocative ideas, and they gave me hope, even if they did not reveal immediate solutions.”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

Source: Leadership and the New Science (1992), p. 2

Hope, Idea, Reading

“Industry's responsibilities broaden. Its leaders must develop an enlightened and militant statesmanship, for progress in the solution of these problems is vital. If this responsibility is not assumed and discharged from within industry, it is bound to be superimposed from without.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: "The Broadened Responsibilities of Industry's Executive," 1936, p. 362

Problem

“Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions.”

Atifete Jahjaga (1975) politician from Kosovo

The Hill http://thehill.com/policy/international/232703-kosovar-president-atifete-jahjaga-the-four-key-ingredients-for-peace

Democracy

“Man is the roof and crown of creation. He may be tossed about by uncertain storms of life, but the solution to it lies in his own efforts in finding an ideal, and then raising his personality, from the level of petty emotions, to the loftier heights of the chosen ideal.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Life, Effort, Personality

“We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.
Speech before the 1983 General Election.
1980s

World, Way, Hell, Problem

“No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one. You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Introduction to Treasury of the Free World (1946)

Problem

“Religion’s preferred punishment is almost always death, regardless of the crime. But the death penalty is a statistical failure just like all their proposed solutions to other problems always are. Here in the US, the states that still have the death penalty also have the highest murder rates; its a negative correlation. The problem there is one of society, the conditions imposed and the types of responses that are culturally coaxed. When murder happens, and that person is caught and tried, we should remove them as a threat, and whether they are imprisoned, institutionalized, or what have you should be determined by the particulars in each case.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, How is secular humanist governance better than theocracy? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/09/07/how-is-secular-humanist-governance-better-than-theocracy/ (September 7, 2013)

Death, Religion, Penalty, Failure

“Dark are the paths which a higher hand allows us to traverse here… let us hold fast to the faith that a finer, more sublime solution of the enigmas of earthly life will be present, will become part of us.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

In his letter to Schumacher on February 9, 1823. As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 361

Life, Faith, Parting

“This leads to the second most dangerous, and very disingenuous claim by Fair Tax advocates, that it repeals the income tax. It does not. The Fair Tax Bill merely repeals various sections of the federal tax code relating to the income tax. The bill leaves the 16th Amendment intact; most tellingly, it uses tepid language about the 16th Amendment, saying only that Congress “finds” that it “should be repealed.”
This clearly leaves an opening for Congress to reinstate the income tax once the national sales tax is in place. Given the addiction to spending and the lack of integrity that pervades our government, I’m convinced that even if the Fair Tax passes, it’ll be implemented without doing away with the income tax — thus giving us the worst of both worlds. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some congressman championed “bringing back” the income tax as the only solution to a future “debt crisis.””

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

2012, " The Fair Tax Isn't Fair, It's a Farce http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7101"

World, Future

“Ever since the Industrial Revolution, Western society has benefited from science, logic, and reductionism over intuition and holism. Psychologically and politically we would much rather assume that the cause of a problem is “out there,” rather than “in here.” It’s almost irresistible to blame something or someone else, to shift responsibility away from ourselves, and to look for the control knob, the product, the pill, the technical fix that will make a problem go away.
Serious problems have been solved by focusing on external agents — preventing smallpox, increasing food production, moving large weights and many people rapidly over long distances. Because they are embedded in larger systems, however, some of our “solutions” have created further problems. And some problems, those most rooted in the internal structure of complex systems, the real messes, have refused to go away.
Hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, economic instability, unemployment, chronic disease, drug addiction, and war, for example, persist in spite of the analytical ability and technical brilliance that have been directed toward eradicating them. No one deliberately creates those problems, no one wants them to persist, but they persist nonetheless.
That is because they are intrinsically systems problems-undesirable behaviors characteristic of the system structures that produce them. They will yield only as we reclaim our intuition, stop casting blame, see the system as the source of its own problems, and find the courage and wisdom to restructure it.”

Donella Meadows (1941–2001) American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer

Pages 3-4.
Thinking in systems: A Primer (2008)

Wisdom, Hunger, War, People

“I believe C++ instills fear in programmers, fear that the interaction of some details causes unpredictable results. Its unmanageable complexity has spawned more fear-preventing tools than any other language, but the solution should have been to create and use a language that does not overload the whole goddamn human brain with irrelevant details.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Checking for Errors Before Run Time http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/41997404227dcc12 (Usenet article). <br class="br">Usenet articles, C++

Fear

“With the collapse of the old welfare states, all this has come to seem decidedly quaint. As the language of antibureaucratic individualism has been adopted, with increasing ferocity, by the Right, which insists on “market solutions” to every social problem, the mainstream Left has increasingly reduced itself to fighting a kind of pathetic rearguard action, trying to salvage remnants of the old welfare state: it has acquiesced with–often spearheaded–attempts to make government efforts more “efficient” though the partial privatization of services and the incorporation of ever-more “market principle,” “market incentives,” and market-based “accountability processes” into the structure of the bureaucracy itself.”

David Graeber book The Utopia of Rules

The Utopia of Rules (2015)

Problem, Effort, Fight

“To the deficit commission, a depression is the solution to the problem, not a problem.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

" Why Government is More Afraid of Debt than Depression http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6002" Video Interview, The Real News Network (TRNN) (December 16, 2010)

Problem

“The real solution to human longevity will likely involve both traditional and alternative medicine, scientific and philosophical problem-solving, as well as big data analysis and human intuition.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Problem

“The historic opportunity now is to present an interest free economy as a third type of solution which is to be found neither in communism nor in capitalism but transcends both.”

Margrit Kennedy (1939–2013) German architect

Source: Interest and Inflation Free Money (1995), Chapter Three, Who Would Profit From a New Monetary System?, p. 76

Communication

“I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem.”

Emil Ghoury

Israel did not cause the Arabs to leave http://web.archive.org/20020604080915/holyland-isreal.tripod.com/pal-refugees.htm, Beirut Telegraph (September 6, 1948).

Problem, Help

“Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door belongs to Guan Yin Bodhisattva. We follow and take refuge in the three Sages of the West. Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door is the solution to resolving the problems of the human realm. Our practice is based on Zen Buddhism and wisdom in life. Our practice is aimed at transcending the mundane world and it is based on the Pure Land school of Buddhism. Hence, Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door is an integration of the essence of various schools of Buddhism. Thus, the objective of our practice is the Four Sublime States of Loving-kindness, Compassion, Appreciative joy and Equanimity.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

Los Angeles, (September 2016)[citation needed]
Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door

Love, Life, Wisdom, World

“There were two problems which had to be faced. One was spatial and the other methodological. In the first case I had to do something about relational painting, i. e. the balancing of the various parts of the painting with and against each other. The obvious answer was symmetry – make it the same all over. The question still remained, though, of how to do this in depth. A symmetrical image or configuration symmetrically placed on a open ground is not balanced out in the illusionistic space. The solution I arrived at, and there are probably quite a few, although I only know of one other, color density, forces illusionistic space out of the painting at constant intervals by using a regulated pattern. The remaining problem was simply to find a method of paint application which followed and complemented the design solution. This was done by using the house painters technique and tools.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, The Pratt lecture (1960), p. 114

Color, Question, Problem, Parting

“Nobody is entitled to someone else's money, that is the bottom line. People think they are entitled to it because they think they paid into it, nobody paid into anything, it was a fraud. Every single dollar that the gov collected in social security taxes, has already been spent, there is nothing there, there is no money, so the only money the government gets to make current payment is the money it can take from people who are still working. Its a transfer from the working poor in many cases to the retired rich. We don't have the money, I feel bad for the fact people made promises we can't keep, I feel bad for the people that invested with Bernie Madoff and lost their money, but its the same principle, its the same Ponzi scheme. We have to put an end to it, we have to find real solution to these problems because if we keep on denying that they exist and keep on spending money, we're going to destroy the value of everyone's benefits.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

RTC, Avon, CT, 10th May 2010

Money, People, Feeling, Fraud

“Things appear very complex but underneath they are quite simple. People complicate things by super-imposing their own viewpoints and advantages. If you remove all that is superfluous, most problems have very simple solutions.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

26
Ki Sayings (2003)

People, Problem, Appearance

“A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.”

Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) American speculative fiction writer

As quoted in The Issue at Hand: Studies in Contemporary Magazine Science Fiction (1964) by James Blish, p. 14

Problem, Science

“Business process engineering aims to achieve the greatest efficiency possible in terms of business-organizational solutions. Organizational departments, reengineering project teams or even business process owners can be responsible for process engineering. While work schedule development for manufacturing processes might be institutionally allocated to a certain department for years as job preparation, other kinds of business processes are not quite as regimented.”

August-Wilhelm Scheer (1941) German business theorist

Source: ARIS architecture and reference models for business process management (2000), p. 379.

Business

“This fight is not going to be over in 10 minutes or 10 weeks; there’s no quick solution. If you think it’s taking too long, remember, God is with you.”

James MacDonald (1960) American pastor

Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 43

God, Thinking, Fight

“The idea of storage as a solution of economic problems at least has the support of common sense. It is diametrically opposed to the topsy-turvy Alice-in-Wonderland reasoning that has marked so much of our depression thinking and policy.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Preface, p. vii
Storage and Stability (1937)

Idea, Support, Problem, Thinking

“Agile development methodologies promise higher customer satisfaction, lower defect rates, faster development times and a solution to rapidly changing requirements. Plan-driven approaches promise predictability, stability, and high assurance. However, both approaches have shortcomings that, if left unaddressed, can lead to project failure. The challenge is to balance the two approaches to take advantage of their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Barry Boehm and Richard Turner. " Observations on balancing discipline and agility http://people.cs.aau.dk/~jeremy/SOE2011/resources/Boehm.pdf." Agile Development Conference, 2003. ADC 2003. Proceedings of the. IEEE, 2003.

Failure, Change, Time

“Golovinski: Mr. Rachkovsky, a Zionist congress met last year. I can simply fabricate a manifesto!
Rachkovsky: Not good enough…and that will take too much time!
I have a solution!
Here is an old book by someone named Maurice Joly. It appeared here in France in 1864… and four years ago our journalist Decyon tried to use it to attack Russia’s financial system.
Golovinski: The “Dialogue in hell between Machiavelli and Montesquie”!
Jolly’s book attacks Napoleon III’s government! It can be read as a plan for tyranny!
Rachkovsky: Exactly.
All you have to do is 'change this into a testament that emanates from the Jewish leaders…eh, Golovinski?
Golovinski: Ah, yes. A Jewish conspiracy! Yes, yes.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.59

Books, Hell, Appearance, Change

“It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should seek a simple solution.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Question

“If you look at the surviving PC support, it's very much concentrated in Atlantic Canada, in the provinces to the east of Quebec. These are very much equivalent to the United States border states. They're weak economically. They have very grim prospects if Quebec separates. These people want a solution at almost any cost.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

1990s, Speech to the Council for National Policy (1997)

People, Support

“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Abolition of Man

The Abolition of Man (1943)

Wisdom, Men, Age, Soul

“We never know through what Divine mysteries of compensation the great Father of the universe may be carrying out His sublime plan; but those three words, "God is love" ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 270

Love, God, Soul, Universe

“The solution, once revealed, must seem to have been inevitable. At least half of all the mystery novels published violate this law.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

"Casual Notes on the Mystery Novel" (essay, 1949), first published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)

Law

“The simple point which I am concerned to make is that where ultimate values are irreconcilable, clear-cut solutions cannot, in principle, be found. To decide rationally in such situations is to decide in the light of general ideals, the overall pattern of life pursued by a man or a group or a society.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas

Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Introduction (1969)

Life, Light

“These testimonies establish once and for all that we are not alone. Technologies related to extraterrestrial phenomena are capable of providing solutions to the global energy crisis, and other environmental and security challenges. (May 9, 2001)”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

2001
Source: [David, Leonard, DO NOT PUBLISH: UFO Group Demands Congressional Hearing, Space.com, May 9, 2001, http://www.space.com/searchforlife/UFO_hearings_010509.html, 2007-03-27, http://web.archive.org/web/20031018113821/http://www.space.com/searchforlife/UFO_hearings_010509.html, 2003-10-18]

“We found that technological optimism is the common and the most dangerous reaction to our findings… Technology can relieve the symptoms of the problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem— the problem of growth in a finite system- and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it… We would deplore an unreasoned rejection of the benefits of technology as strongly as we argue here against an unreasoned acceptance of them. Perhaps the best summary of our position is the motto of the Sierra Club; not blind opposition to progress but opposition to blind progress.
Taking no action to solve these problems is equivalent of taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the ultimate limits of that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse.
The way to proceed is clear… [we posses] all that is necessary to create a totally new form of human society… the two missing ingredients are the realistic long-term goal… and the human will to achieve that goal.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Source: Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974), p. 88, quoted in: Martin Bridgstock, David Burch, John Forge, John Laurent, Ian Lowe (1998) Science, Technology and Society: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 245-246

World, Faith, Way, Optimism

“Reference models can be quite comprehensive, consisting of hundreds or thousands of model objects. This is why various levels of aggregation are used. Reference models provide enterprises with an initial process engineering solution, letting them determine the degree of detail of the model and the business content.”

August-Wilhelm Scheer (1941) German business theorist

Source: ARIS architecture and reference models for business process management (2000), p. 380.

Business

“If truth were left to a market philosophy, there would be no point in continuing to make an argument for which there are no takers, or to ask a question for which there are no answers. The minority community has other grounds to sustain a wholesome discomfort and thereby keeps the door open for solutions not yet found.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 99

Truth, Communication, Question

“From Richard McKeon and Robert Brumsbaugh I learned to view the history of philosophy as a series, not of alternative solutions to the same problems, but of quite different sets of problems. From Rudolph Carnap and Carl Hempel I learned how pseudo-problems could be revealed as such by restarting them in the formal mode of speech. From Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss I learned how they could be so revealed by being translated into Whiteheadian or Hegelian terms.”

Richard Rorty book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

Preface
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979)

History, Problem, Learning

“All, then, are agreed on the pressing nature of this problem, all are bent on its solution, and though it would doubtless be quite Utopian to expect a similar agreement as to the value of any remedy that may be proposed, it is at least of immense importance that, on a subject thus universally regarded as of supreme importance, we have such a consensus of opinion at the outset. This will be the more remarkable and the more hopeful sign when it is shown, as I believe will be conclusively shown in this work, that the answer to this, one of the most pressing questions of the day, makes of comparatively easy solution many other problems which have hitherto taxed the ingenuity of the greatest thinkers and reformers of our time. Yes, the key to the problem how to restore the people to the land — that beautiful land of ours, with its canopy of sky, the air that blows upon it, the sun that warms it, the rain and dew that moisten it — the very embodiment of Divine love for man — is indeed a Master-Key, for it is the key to a portal through which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour a flood of light on the problems of intemperance, of excessive toil, of restless anxiety, of grinding poverty — the true limits of Governmental interference, ay, and even the relations of man to the Supreme Power.”

Ebenezer Howard (1850–1928) British writer, founder of the garden city movement

Introduction.
Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898)

Love, People, Beauty, Hope

“When an equation…clearly leads to two negative or imaginary roots, [Diophantus] retraces his steps and shows by how by altering the equation, he can get a new one that has rational roots. …Diophantus is a pure algebraist; and since algebra in his time did not recognize irrational, negative, and complex numbers, he rejected equations with such solutions.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 143.

Time

“[ Gustav Fechner ] was troubled by materialism… His philosophical solution of the spiritual problem lat in his affirmation of the identity of the mind and matter and in his assurance that the entire universe can be regarded as readily from the point of view of its consciousness… as it can be viewed as inert matter.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: A History of Experimental Psychology, 1929, p. 269; Cited in: Robert R. Holt, ‎Sigmund Freud (1989) Freud Reappraised: A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Theory, p. 148.

Problem, Universe

“At our meeting in Vienna and subsequently, I expressed our readiness and desire to find, through peaceful negotiation, a solution to any and all problems that divide us. At the same time. I made clear that in view of the objectives of the ideology to which you adhere, the United States could not tolerate any action on your part which in a major way disturbed the existing over-all balance of power in the world. I stated that an attempt to force abandonment of our responsibilities and commitments in Berlin would constitute such an action and that the United States would resist with all the power at its command.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, First letter to Nikita Khrushchev

World, Peace, Way, Problem

“She says the solution is to ban guns. They tried that in France which has among the toughest gun laws anywhere in the world, and 130 people were brutally murdered by Islamic terrorists in cold blood. Her plan is to disarm law abiding Americans, abolishing the Second Amendment, and leaving only the bad guys and terrorists with guns. No good. Not going to happen, folks. … She wants to take away American's guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us. Let them come into the country, we don't have guns. Let them come in, let them have all the fun they want.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

People, World, Law, Guy

“The principle of bounded rationality [is] the capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world — or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Variant: The principle of bounded rationality [is] the capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world — or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.
Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 198.

World, Behavior, Problem

“The concern of OR with finding an optimum decision, policy, or design is one of its essential characteristics. It does not seek merely to define a better solution to a problem than the one in use; it seeks the best solution… [It] can be characterized as the application of scientific methods, techniques, and tools to problems involving the operations of systems so as to provide those in control of the operations with optimum solutions to the problems.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), p. 8, cited in: R.L. McCown (2001) "Learning to bridge the gap between science-based decision support and the practice of farming". In: Aust. J. Agric. Res., Vol 52, p. 560-561

Problem, Decision

“The concept of 'number' in its most elementary sense as the signless integer appears to be an immediate abstraction from quantitative reality subjected to processes of counting and measurement. Vulgar fractions arise from division of a quantity into equal parts. But in what sense is zero a number? Are there negative numbers? Are there numbers corresponding to incommensurable ratios? Each question requires for its solution a fresh exercise of that kind of creative imagination which we call mathematical abstraction.”

George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician

100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)

Exercises, Imagination, Mathematics, Question

“Truth has no greater enemy than its unwise defenders, and no warmer friends than those who, receiving it in a meek and tolerant spirit, respect the conscientious convictions of others, and seek, in study and in prayer, for the best solution of mysterious and incomprehensible revelations.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

In his Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: 1855)

Truth, Study

Quotes about solution page 3

Quotes about solution
page 3