Problem Quotes - Page 39

• I don't believe that the American people want us to focus on our job security. They want us to focus on their job security. I don't think they want more gridlock. I don't think they want more partisanship. I don't think they want more obstruction. They didn't send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive. That's not what they want. They sent us to Washington to work together, to get things done, and to solve the problems that they're grappling with every single day.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Believe, Fighting

  Barack Obama's remarks at GOP House Issues Conference in Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. January 29, 2010.

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• Chantal's only ruse ... was her shattering simplicity. While a weak man or an imposter is always more complicated than the problem he is trying to solve, and thinking to encompass his adversary, merely keeps prowling interminably around himself, the heroic nature will throw itself into the heart of the danger to turn it to its own use, just as captured artillery is turned about and aimed at the backs of the fleeing enemy.

  Georges Bernanos

  Heart, Men, Thinking

  "Joy". Book by Georges Bernanos, 1929.

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• To me this question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or a bad thing. It is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstance, and a complete answer to the question, In what cases is liberty good and in what cases is it bad? would involve not merely a universal history of mankind, but a complete solution of the problems which such a history would offer.

  James Fitzjames Stephen

  Fire, Liberty, Answers

  "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". Book by James Fitzjames Stephen, Ch.2, 1873-1874.

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• All problems have to be solved eventually by ONESELF, and that's where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap because, in the last analysis, A MAN IS AN ISLAND.

  Kenneth Williams

  Men, Islands, Lovely

  "Kenneth Williams: secret loves behind the life of a tormented man" by Vanessa Thorpe, www.theguardian.com. October 9, 2010.

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• Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don't talk about what democracy means - what it bestows on us - the revolutionary idea that it isn't just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency.

  Bill Moyers

  Mean, Revolutionary Ideas, Issues

  "The Power of Democracy". Speech accepting the Public Intellectual Award of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation on February 07, 2007. "Moyers on Democracy". Book by Bill D. Moyers, p. 92, 2008.

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• Serious accidents are frequently blamed on "human error." Yet careful analysis of such situations shows that the design or installation of the equipment has contributed significantly to the problems. The design team or installers did not pay sufficient attention to the needs of those who would be using the equipment, so confusion or error was almost unavoidable.

  Donald A. Norman

  Team, Errors, Confusion

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Don Norman. Introduction to the 2002 Edition, p. ix, 2002.

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• Innocence lost is not easily regained. The designer simply cannot predict the problems people will have, the misinterpretations that will arise, and the errors that will get made.

  Donald A. Norman

  Errors, People, Innocence

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Don Norman, ch. 6, 1988.

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• Computer scientists have so far worked on developing powerful programming languages that make it possible to solve the technical problems of computation. Little effort has gone toward devising the languages of interaction.

  Donald A. Norman

  Powerful, Effort, Gone

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Don Norman, ch. 6, 1988.

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• The major problems facing the development of products that are safer, less prone to error, and easier to use and understand are not technological: they are social and organizational.

  Donald A. Norman

  Errors, Use, Development

  "The Invisible Computer". Book by Don Norman, ch. 10, 1998.

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• There's so many problems in our world, so much negativity. Don't worry about the darkness - turn on the light and the darkness automatically goes. Ramp up the light of unity within - help do that for yourself, help do that for the world and then we're really doing something, we're doing something that brings that light of unity.

  David Lynch

  Our World, Light, Worry

  "David Lynch Questions 9/11 On National U.S. Radio". Prison Planet, January 25, 2007.

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• The problem is that many MPs never see the London that exists beyond the wine bars and brothels of Westminster.

  Ken Livingstone

  Wine, Mps, Bars

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• In actual fact, the female function is to explore, discover, invent, solve problems crack jokes, make music - all with love. In other words, create a magic world.

  Valerie Solanas

  Magic, Female, Cracks

  Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, 1967.

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• I just want people who are qualified, I want them to believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. So yep, I don't have a problem with appointing an openly gay person. Because they're not going to try to put sharia law in our laws.

  Herman Cain

  Believe, Gay, Law

  "Cain Says He Would Be Ok With Appointing Gay Cabinet Members Because They Wouldn’t Impose Sharia Law". thinkprogress.org. June 06, 2011.

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• I don't think that there's substantiated evidence that shows that voter fraud is such a rampant problem that we have to put in place measures that people have to pass in order to exercise that constitutional free right. Voting should be -- and is required to be -- a right that is unencumbered. That does not have tests that people must pass.... Anything put in place to restrict that right, or to make it more difficult for people to exercise it, should be outlawed, and should not be allowed.

  Clay Aiken

  Exercise, Thinking, Order

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• I tremble for our world, where, in the smallest ways, we find it impossible, as Marshall Hodgson enjoined, to find room for the other in our minds. If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? I no longer think that any principle or opinion is worth anything if it makes you unkind or intolerant.

  Karen Armstrong

  Thinking, Our World, Mind

  Karen Armstrong (2010). “The Spiral Staircase”, p.333, Vintage Canada

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• While our responses to the problems facing us immediately are also important, we cannot forget to carve out the future of Japan ten or one hundred years into the future. In doing so, we must not resort to superficial measures. Instead, it is imperative to engage in true reforms that ascertain the state of society we seek to achieve.

  Shinzo Abe

  Japan, Years, Important

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• I describe it ( the new aesthetics) 'radically': I say aesthetics = human being. That is a radical formula. I set the idea of aesthetics directly in the context of human existence, and then I have the whole problem in the hand, them I have not a special problem, I have a "holography" (reacting on a former suggestion of the public as a slight joke, fh) I don't know exactly what a holography is.. (1973

  Joseph Beuys

  Hands, Ideas, Special

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• When external and internal forces hostile to the development of socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of the restoration of the capitalist system, when a threat arises to the cause of socialism in that country ... this is no longer merely a problem for that country's people, but a common problem, the concern of all socialist countries.

  Leonid Brezhnev

  Country, Socialist Countries, People

  Speech at the 5th Congress of the Polish United Workers Party (12 November 1968), quoted in "The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy" by Matthew J. Ouimet, 2003.

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• One of my problems is to find the Ego, which has only one form and is immortal - to find it in animals and men, in the heaven and in the hell which together form the world in which we live.

  Max Beckmann

  Animal, Men, Heaven

  Max Beckmann (2003). “Max Beckmann On My Painting”, Tate

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• I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Land, Differentiation, Research

  "Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Why We Should Not Name Human Races - A Biological View", p. 231, 1977.

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• People, particularly over-moralistic Americans, have often seen me as a pessimist and humourless to boot, yet I think I have an almost maniacal sense of humour. The problem is that it's rather deadpan.

  J. G. Ballard

  Thinking, People, Boots

  "Age of Unreason". Interview with Jeannette Baxter, www.theguardian.com. June 22, 2004.

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• One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world's problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.

  Eric Hoffer

  Technology, Men, Medicine

  "Reflections on the Human Condition". Book by Eric Hoffer, Section 60, 1973.

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• To think out a problem is not unlike drawing a caricature. You have to exaggerate the salient point and leave out that which is not typical. "To illustrate a principle ," says Bagehot , "you must exaggerate much and you must omit much." As to the quantity of absolute truth in a thought : it seems to me the more comprehensive and unobjectionable a thought becomes, the more clumsy and unexciting it gets. I like half-truths of a certain kind they are interesting and they stimulate.

  Eric Hoffer

  Thinking, Drawing, Interesting

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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• I could never figure out or probably did not take the trouble to figure out what the great philosophical problems are about. The momentous statements I come across are at best a storm in a teacup. There are quite a number of people who have a vested interest in the stuff, make a noble living out of it, and they conspire with one another to keep it alive.

  Eric Hoffer

  Philosophical, Numbers, People

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• There is no problem so complicated that you can't find a very simple answer to it if you look at it right.

  Douglas Adams

  Simple, Looks, Answers

  Douglas Adams (2005). “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time”, p.99, Del Rey

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