Modern Problems Quotes & Sayings

People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society. — Vince Lombardi

The curse of modern times is the preponderance of male hormones in places where they can do long-term damage. Even if were not talking about wars between nations or assaults on nature, there's still that aggressiveness that keeps us apart from each other and the problems we need to be working on. — Robert James Waller

Modern problems proliferate and remain unsolved because we spend so much time trying to deal with societal and world problems without first dealing with family and community problems. If we organized for normal families and communities - if these two groups provided the functions they are designed for - world problems would diminish and fade out in two or three generations. — Ralph Borsodi

Through Jung [Pauli] became very interested in various kinds of mysticism, including Jewish mysticism. This led Pauli to develop a friendship with Gershom Scholem, the world's greatest authority in that field and in the Cabala, .... On one occasion Scholem asked me to tell him about unsolved problems in modern physics. .... When I mentioned this number --137-- to Scholem, .... He told me that in Hebrew .... The number corresponding to the word 'cabala' happens to be 137. — Victor F. Weisskopf

This absence of intellectual mechanisms for questioning our own actions becomes clear when the expression of any unstructured doubt - for example, over the export of arms to potential enemies or the loss of shareholder power to managers or the loss of parliamentary power to the executive - is automatically categorized as naive or idealistic or bad for the economy or simply bad for jobs. And should we attempt to use sensible words to deal with these problems, they will be caught up immediately in the structures of the official arguments which accompany the official modern ideologies - arguments as sterile as the ideologies are irrelevant. — John Ralston Saul

The world always said to just be yourself, but it turned out when Evelyn was herself, no guys were at all interested, so she was left with games of make-believe, expressing enthusiasm for whatever the men wanted to do, be it rock climbing or going to a cheese-beer pairing or a Knicks game. — Stephanie Clifford

There is no religion and no philosophy that can give us a comprehensive answer to the whole of our problems, and the abandonment and isolation of the individual who is given no answer, or only inadequate answers, to his question lead to a situation in which more and more cheap, obvious solutions and answers are sought and provided. As, everywhere and in all departments of life, there are contradictory schools and parties, and an equal number of contradictory answers, one of the most frequent reactions is that modern man ceases to ask questions and takes refuge in a conception that considers only the most obvious, superficial aspects, and becomes skeptical, nihilistic, and egocentric. Or, alternatively, he tries to solve all his problems by plunging headlong into a collective situation and a collective conviction, and seeks to redeem himself in this way. — Erich Neumann

There are few problems in the world that economic prosperity
cannot help solve. Yet the engines of that prosperity are under fierce
attack. The forces that seek power over others have gained the upper
hand against those that seek freedom. By harming wealth creation,
they cause even more strain on society. Historically, this is nothing
new. State domination over its subjects has roots that connect statism,
totalitarianism, communism, and socialism to more modern-day variants
of liberalism and progressivism. It is a constant fight and we must
win. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

We can't solve modern problems by going back in time. Retreating to the safety of the familiar is an understandable response, but God has called us to a life of faith. And faith requires us to face the unknown while trusting Him completely. — Charles R. Swindoll

We've got jihadists. That doesn't mean that all Muslims are problems with respect to terrorism, but there is something going on here. We've got a problem dealing with one aspect of one portion of modern Islam - just as hundreds of years ago the world had a problem with Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition. — James Woolsey

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. — Bertrand Russell

What I do feel the modern child lacks, when compared with the earlier generation, is concentration, and the sheer dogged grit to carry a long job through ... Helping children to face up to a certain amount of drudgery, cheerfully and energetically, is one of the biggest problems that teachers, in these days of ubiquitous entertainment, have to face in our schools ... — Miss Read

For Tommy, on that hot and empty afternoon, was in a state of mind in which grown-up people go away and write books about their whole world, and stories about what it is like to be married, and plays about the important problems of modern times. Tommy, being only ten years old, was not able to do harm on this large and handsome scale. — G.K. Chesterton

Our modern conception of the average person is not a mathematical truth but a human invention, created a century and a half ago by two European scientists to solve the social problems of their era. — Todd Rose

P11- when people cherish some set of values and do not feel any threat to them they experience well being
12- we are frequently told that the problems of our decade.. have shifted from the external realm of economics and now have to do with the quality of individual life. — C. Wright Mills

I think, however, that there isn't any solution to this problem of education other than to realize that the best teaching can be done only when there is a direct individual relationship between a student and a good teacher - a situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the things, and talks about the things. It's impossible to learn very much by simply sitting in a lecture, or even by simply doing problems that are assigned. But in our modern times we have so many students to teach that we have to try to find some substitute for the ideal. — Richard P. Feynman

The old Mauser was too long, too big, and too heavy for a child. A child's small arm could not reach freely for the trigger, and he had difficulty taking aim. Modern design has solved these problems, eliminated the inconveniences. The dimensions of weapons are now perfectly suited to a boy's physique, so much so that in the hands of tall, massive men, the new guns appear somewhat comical and childish. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

I conceive of the film as a modern art form particularly interesting to the sense of sight. Painting has its own peculiar problems and specific sensations, and so has the film. But there are also problems in which the dividing line is obliterated, or where the two infringe upon each other. More especially, the cinema can fulfill certain promises made by the ancient arts, in the realization of which painting and film become close neighbors and work together. — Hans Richter

It is love that transports us, that fills us with joy! Love turns life into one long adventure, every encounter is a dazzling experience - well, not always, of course, but in actual fact, it is our less successful love affairs that enable us to appreciate the others. I think love protects us from one of the biggest problems facing the modern world: boredom. — Francois Lelord

We find that the manager, particularly at senior levels, is overburdened with work. With the increasing complexity of modern organizations and their problems, he is destined to become more so. He is driven to brevity, fragmentation, and superficiality in his tasks, yet he cannot easily delegate them because of the nature of his information. — Henry Mintzberg

Light-years away, another starship was also experiencing problems, though perhaps not as severe. The I.S.S. Antares was not a new ship either. Many older ships in the imperial space fleet reaching retirement age were being refitted with more modern equipment to extend their useful lives. Thus, technologically at least, Antares was currently one of the most advanced ships of the Imperial Space Fleet. Unfortunately, she was now also one of the most troubled. This is what the Phoenix refitting program had done to the Antares. — Christina Engela

The theologian is interested specifically in the modern novel because there he sees reflected the man of our time, the unbeliever, who is nevertheless grappling in a desperate and usually honest way with intense problems of the spirit. — Flannery O'Connor

The morality of the church is anachronistic. Will it ever develop a moral insight and courage sufficient to cope with the real problems of modern society? If it does it will require generations of effort and not a few martyrdoms. We ministers maintain our pride and self-respect and our sense of importance only through a vast and inclusive ignorance. If we knew the world in which we live a little better we would perish in shame or be overcome by a sense of futility. — Reinhold Niebuhr

We are at a stage in history in which remolding society is one of the great challenges facing all of us in the West. If one looks around the Western world, one can see the rumblings of discontent, almost regardless of polictical systems, as we come face to face with the problems that the modern age has dealt us. — Hillary Clinton

The Panic of 1819 exerted a profound effect on American economic thought. As the first great financial depression, similar to a modern expansion-depression pattern, the panic heightened interest in economic problems, and particularly those problems related to the causes and cures of depressed conditions. — Murray Rothbard

Moreover, such a body freed from nervous tension and over-fatigue is the ideal shelter provided by nature for housing a well-balanced mind that is always fully capable of successfully meeting all of the complex problems of modern living. — Joseph Pilates

There are no problems without consciousness ... , in what way does consciousness arise? Nobody can say with certainty; but we can observe small children in the process of becoming conscious. Every parent can see ; if they pay attention. And this is what we are able to observe: when the child recognizes someone or something - when [they] "know" a person or a thing - then we feel that child has consciousness. That, no doubt, is also why in Paradise it was the tree of knowledge which bore such fateful fruit."
Carl Jung
Modern Man in Search of a soul
1933 — C. G. Jung

Two world wars, three monstrous dictatorships-in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Red China-plus every lesser variant of devastating socialist experimentation in a global spread of brutality and despair, have not prompted modern intellectuals to question or revise their dogma. They still think that it is daring, idealistic and unconventional to denounce the rich. They still believe that money is the root of all evil-except government money, which is the solution to all problems. — Ayn Rand

For hundreds of thousands of years, life was brutal. It still is for a good chunk of the planet. The technology and wealth we enjoy in North America is a very new development in history, and I think we miss the challenges of day-to-day survival in our comparatively easy modern lives. Some people will even create problems if they have none. — Jeff Carlson

...modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man's capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandist, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks. — Jacques Ellul

Blatant idiocies had been tried by early men and women--foolishness that would never have been considered by species aware of the laws of nature. Desperate superstitions had bred during the savage centuries. Styles of government, intrigues, philosophies were tested with abandon. It was almost as if Orphan Earth had been a planetary laboratory, upon which a series of senseless and bizarre experiments were tried. Illogical and shameful as they seemed in retrospect, those experiences enriched modern Man. Few races had made so many mistakes in so short a time, or tried so many tentative solutions to hopeless problems. — David Brin

Modernity is the ensemble of changes - intellectual, political, economic, social, cultural, technological, aesthetic - that have altered the world drastically since roughly the 17th century, until which time the world was, in the above respects, far less different from the world of any previous epoch of recorded history than it is from the world of today. The modern predicament is the set of problems these changes have bequeathed us. — George Scialabba

Pure love is the best medicine for the modern world. This is what is lacking in all societies. The root cause of all problems, from personal problems to global problems is the absence of love. Love is the binding factor, the unifying factor. Love creates the feeling of oneness among people. It unifies a nation and its people. Love creates a sense of unity while hatred causes division. Egotism and hatred cuts people's minds into pieces. Love should rule. There is no problem which love cannot solve. — Mata Amritanandamayi

I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on the endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations. — Douglas MacArthur

Norman Cousins, endeavoring in his essay Modern Man Is Obsolete to express the deepest feelings of intelligent people at that staggering historical moment, wrote not about how to protect one's self from atomic radiation, or how to meet political problems, or the tragedy of man's self-destruction. Instead his editorial was a meditation on loneliness. "All man's history," he proclaimed, "is an endeavor to shatter his loneliness. — Rollo May

Having come into contact with a civilization which has over-emphasized the freedom of the individual, we are in fact faced with one of the big problems of Africa in the modern world. Our problem is just this: how to get the benefits of European society - benefits that have been brought about by an organization based upon the individual - and yet retain African's own structure of society in which the individual is a member of a kind of fellowship. — Julius Nyerere

Where was innovation to come from? We have argued that innovation comes from new people with new ideas, developing new solutions to old problems. In Rome the people doing the producing were slaves and, later, semi-servile coloni with few incentives to innovate, since it was their masters, not they, who stood to benefit from any innovation. As we will see many times in this book, economies based on the repression of labor and systems such as slavery and serfdom are notoriously noninnovative. This is true from the ancient world to the modern era. In the United States, for example, the northern states took part in the Industrial Revolution, not the South. Of course slavery and serfdom created huge wealth for those who owned the slaves and controlled the serfs, but it did not create technological innovation or prosperity for society. N — Daron Acemoglu

I think in the modern world we really need to have movie theaters or places we can go in and rejuvenate ourselves. I think we'll have less problems with our souls and our health. I do that in my life, and I feel healthy and happy. I need those hours in the darkness where I used to spend time as a kid, sitting in a little closet in the darkness, listening to AM radio, having glowing paint that I illuminated, just sitting there, dreaming about anything, not being disturbed for an hour or two, just alone in the dark. I'm still that little boy in my brain. — Peter Stormare

Composing computer programs to solve scientific problems is like writing poetry. You must choose every word with care and link it with the other words in perfect syntax. There is no place for verbosity or carelessness. To become fluent in a computer lnaguage demands almost the antithesis of modern loose thinking. It requires many interactive sessions, the hands-on use of the device. You do not learn a foreign language from a book, rather you have to live in the country for year to let the langauge become an automatic part of you, and the same is true for computer languages. — James Lovelock

I have often asked myself, "What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?" Like modern loggers, did he shout "Jobs, not trees!"? Or: "Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood"? Or: "We don't have proof that there aren't palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering"? Similar questions arise for every society that has inadvertently damaged its environment. — Jared Diamond

The concept of progress, i.e., an improvement or completion (in modern jargon, a rationalization) became dominant in the eighteenth century, in an age of humanitarian-moral belief. Accordingly, progress meant above all progress in culture, self-determination, and education: moral perfection. In an age of economic or technical thinking, it is self-evident that progress is economic or technical progress. To the extent that anyone is still interested in humanitarian-moral progress, it appears as a byproduct of economic progress. If a domain of thought becomes central, then the problems of other domains are solved in terms of the central domain - they are considered secondary problems, whose solution follows as a matter of course only if the problems of the central domain are solved. — Carl Schmitt

The cause of all our personal problems and nearly all the problems of the world can be summed up in a single sentence:
Human life is very deep, and our modern dominant lifestyle is not. — Bo Lozoff

Today, our attention is less than the television advertisement. We're looking at six or seven problems constantly. We're living in the disturbed societies of cities. I think modern technology is one of the worst things human beings have invented. — Marina Abramovic

At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction; he has a secret horror of all which makes him feel his own littleness; the eternal, the infinite, perfection, therefore scare and terrify him. He wishes to approve himself, to admire and congratulate himself; and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The human race never solves any of its problems, it only outlives them. — David Gerrold

One of the problems of our modern world is that there's a lot of things to work through, but, at some point, everybody should take a pause from that and make something, so that it's not just all one-way traffic. — Jarvis Cocker

America's still-segregated modern life is marked by three realities. First, geographic segregation has meant that - although places like Ferguson and Baltimore may seem like extreme examples - most white Americans continue to live in locales that insulate them from the obstacles facing many majority-black communities.21 Second, this legacy, compounded by social self-segregation, has led to a stark result: the overwhelming majority of white Americans don't have a single close relationship with a person who isn't white. Third, there are virtually no American institutions positioned to resolve these persistent problems of systemic and social segregation. — Robert P. Jones

The proper measure of a philosophical system or a scientific theory is not the degree to which it anticipated modern thought, but its degree of success in treating the philosophical and scientific problems of its own day. — Steven Weinberg

Sophie, every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith - acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors. — Dan Brown

in order to be happy, every individual needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort.

Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world's hard problems have already been solved. What's left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can't do, even Einstein couldn't have done. — Peter Thiel

If in the modern world wars have unfortunately to be fought (and they do, it seems) then they must be stopped at the first possible moment, otherwise they corrupt us, they create new problems and make our future even more uncertain. That is more than morality; it's sense. — Jawaharlal Nehru

In Oklahoma, the CEO of the company that makes McDonald's apple pies told me that she had trouble finding enough Americans to handle modern factory jobs-during a recession. The days of rolling out dough and packing pies in a box were over. She needed people who could read, solve problems and communicate what had happened on their shift, and there weren't enough of them coming out of Oklahoma's high schools and community colleges. — Amanda Ripley

When we have in mind that from 25 to 75 per cent of individuals in various communities in the United States have a distinct irregularity in the development of the dental arches and facial form, the cause and significance of which constitutes one of the important problems of this study, the striking contrast found in these Peruvian skulls will be seen to constitute a challenge for our modern civilizations. In a study of 1,276 skulls of these ancient Peruvians, I did not find a single skull with significant deformity of the dental arches — Anonymous

Error processing is turning out to be one of the thorniest problems of modern computer science, and you can't afford to deal with it haphazardly. Some people have estimated that as much as 90 percent of a program's code is written for exceptional, error-processing cases or housekeeping, implying that only 10 percent is written for nominal cases (Shaw in Bentley 1982). With so much code dedicated to handling errors, a strategy for handling them consistently should be spelled out in the architecture. — Steve McConnell

It is entirely undesirable that on modern housing estates only one type of citizen should live,' he argued. 'If we are to enable citizens to lead a full life, if they are each to be aware of the problems of their neighbours, then they should all be drawn from different sectors of the community. We should try to introduce what was always the lovely feature of English and Welsh villages, where the doctor, the grocer, the butcher and the farm labourer all lived in the same street. — Owen Jones

Menaced by environmental problems, torn by struggles between the tiny coterie of wealthy Spaniards at the center and a teeming, fractious polyglot periphery, battered by a corrupt and inept civic and religious establishment, troubled by a past that it barely understood - to the contemporary eye, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mexico City looks oddly familiar. In its dystopic way, it was an amazingly contemporary place, unlike any other then on the planet. It was the first twenty-first-century city, the first of today's modern, globalized megalopolises. — Charles C. Mann

All of modern physics is governed by that magnificent and thoroughly confusing discipline called quantum mechanics ... It has survived all tests and there is no reason to believe that there is any flaw in it. We all know how to use it and how to apply it to problems; and so we have learned to live with the fact that nobody can understand it. — Murray Gell-Mann

What modern art means is that you have to keep finding new ways to express yourself, to express the problems, that there are no settled ways, no fixed approach. This is a painful situation, and modern art is about this painful situation of having no absolutely definite way of expressing yourself. — Louise Bourgeois

Modernity, in contrast, is based on the firm belief that economic growth is not only possible, but absolutely essential... Modernity has turned 'more stuff' into a panacea applicable to almost all public and private problems, from religious fundamentalism through Third World authoritarianism down to a failed marriage... Economic growth has thus become the crucial juncture where almost all modern religions, ideologies and movements meet. — Yuval Noah Harari

What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can't be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who're solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning 'square' rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution. — Robert M. Pirsig

It is not brains or intelligence that is needed to cope with the problems with Plato and Aristotle and all of their successors to the present have failed to confront. What is needed is a readiness to undervalue the world altogether. This is only possible for a Christian ... All technologies and all cultures, ancient and modern, are part of our immediate expanse. There is hope in this diversity since it creates vast new possibilities of detachment and amusement at human gullibility and self-deception. There is no harm in reminding ourselves from time to time that the "Prince of this World" is a great P.R. man, a great salesman of new hardware and software, a great electric engineer, and a great master of the media. It is his master stroke to be not only environmental but invisible for the environmental is invincibly persuasive when ignored. — Marshall McLuhan

Modernity, though, is often surprisingly difficult to "locate." Certainly modernity cannot be defined as the surpassing of earlier forms of brutality. Perhaps it can be claimed that modernity should be equated with the possession of superior technology. But this response may itself reflect the modern fetishization of technology, which make it a magical solution for human problems. — Alexander Edmonds

The modern world needs people with a complex identity who are intellectually autonomous and prepared to cope with uncertainty; who are able to tolerate ambiguity and not be driven by fear into a rigid, single-solution approach to problems, who are rational, foresightful and who look for facts; who can draw inferences and can control their behavior in the light of foreseen consequences, who are altruistic and enjoy doing for others, and who understand social forces and trends. — Robert J. Havighurst

Even if the crises that are looming up are overcome and a new run of prosperity lies ahead, deeper problems will still remain. Modern capitalism has no purpose except to keep the show going. — Joan Robinson

My father left me with his love of Jewish studies and cultural life. To this very day, along with several physicians and scientist colleagues, I take regular periodical lessons taught by a Rabbinical scholar on how the Jewish law views moral and ethical problems related to modern medicine and science. — Aaron Ciechanover

The problems of our day loom ominously before us. Surrounded by the sophistication of modern living, we look heavenward for that unfailing sense of direction, that we might chart and follow a wise and proper course. He whom we call our Heavenly Father will not leave our sincere petition unanswered. — Thomas S. Monson

But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It's about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it. The problems that I saw at the tile warehouse run far deeper than macroeconomic trends and policy. too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time. And a young man [one of Vance's co-workers] with every reason to work - a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way - carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here - a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself. This is distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America. — J.D. Vance

All couples have been told to schedule regular one-on-one time. 'Date night' is the default answer to most problems in modern marriages. And research backs this up. — Bruce Feiler

Today nothing is more modern than the onslaught against the political. American financiers, industrial technicians, Marxist socialists, and anarchic-syndicalist revolutionaries unite in demanding that the biased rule of politics over unbiased economic management be done away with. There must no longer be political problems, only organizational-technical and economic-sociological tasks. The kind of economic-technical thinking that prevails today is no longer capable of perceiving a political idea. The modern state seems to have actually become what Max Weber envisioned: a huge industrial plant. — Carl Schmitt

I have no problems with buying tampons. I am a fairly modern man. But apparently they're not a "proper" present. "Happy birthday, mum!" — Jimmy Carr

The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. — Georg Simmel

I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today. — George Bernard Shaw

It is a commonplace of modern technology that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life's ethical problems. — Reinhold Niebuhr

There is no longer a Christian mind ... the modern Christian has succumbed to secularization. He accepts religion - its morality, its worship, its spiritual culture; but he rejects the religious view of life, the view which sets all earthly issues within the context of the eternal, the view which relates all human problems social, political, cultural to the doctrinal foundations of the Christian Faith, the view which sees all things here below in terms of God's supremacy and earth's transitoriness, in terms of Heaven and Hell. — Harry Blamires

In the ensuing chapters, we will look in some detail at particular manifestations of the modern scientific ideology and the false paths down which it has led us. We will consider how biological determinism has been used to explain and justify inequalities within and between societies and to claim that those inequalities can never be changed. We will see how a theory of human nature has been developed using Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection to claim that social organization is also unchangeable because it is natural. We will see how problems of health and disease have been located within the individual so that the individual becomes a problem for society to cope with rather than society becoming a problem for the individual. And we will see how simple economic relationships masquerading as facts of nature can drive the entire direction of biological research and technology. — Richard C. Lewontin

The Settlement ... is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city. It insists that these problems are not confined to any one portion of the city. It is an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other ... — Jane Addams

The crisis of modern society is precisely that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up. They don't believe it is empirically true to the problems of their lives and times. — Ernest Becker

More people have access to education today than ever before. But I cannot help but feel that the modern educational experience is not preparing us adequately to attend the rich banquet of life. Certainly the young people of today have mastered the use of technology and are capable of solving complex scientific and mathematical problems, but who and what do these serve if they cannot think for themselves? If they have no understanding of the meaning and purpose of their own lives? If they do not know who they are as individuals? — Matthew Kelly

To join the makers of the world is always to feel at least a little more self reliant, a little more omnicompetent. For everyone to bake his own bread or brew his own beer is, we're told, inefficient, and by the usual measures it probably is ... But though it is certainly cheaper and easier to rely on untold, unseen others to provide for our everyday needs, to live that way comes at a price, not least to our sense of competence and independence. We prize these virtues, and yet they have absolutely nothing to do with the efficiencies of modern consumer capitalism. Except perhaps to suggest that there might be some problems with modern consumer capitalism. — Michael Pollan

I am concerned only with the proper training of the mind to encounter and deal with the formidable mass of undigested problems presented to it by the modern world. For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his command. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Normally a period movie has a lot of problems with the graphics. They look modern made. — Guillermo Del Toro

Above all, documentary must reflect the problems and realities of the present. It cannot regret the past; it is dangerous to prophesy the future. It can, and does, draw on the past in its use of existing heritages but it only does so to give point to a modern argument. In no sense is documentary a historical reconstruction and attempts to make it so are destined to failure. Rather it is contemporary fact and event expressed in relation to human associations. — Paul Rotha

It's time to step back and reexamine our hatred and let wrath subside. Are we striking out against the real problems: ignorance, fear, want, greed, and political disenfranchisement or just trying to find the most immediate scapegoat on which to lay the blame? Are we so busy blaming our fellow Hobbits that we've forgotten who is really behind the fouling of our Shire? Are we personally guilty of greed? Most of us are, to an extent. We need to reexamine our own desires, and make sure they are really needs instead of just wants. Poverty could be wiped out world wide, if enough modern Hobbits just said, "No! We will not stand for it anymore," or if those at the top of the economic ladder really wanted to do so. — Steve Bivans

One feature which will probably most impress the mathematician accustomed to the rapidity and directness secured by the generality of modern methods is the deliberation with which Archimedes approaches the solution of any one of his main problems. — Thomas Little Heath

The psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best with only tentative, impromptu, and not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern, "enlightened" individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence. — Joseph Campbell

Some sermons are like "a bridge to nowhere." They are grounded in solid study of the biblical text but never come down to earth on the other side. That is, they fail to connect the biblical truth to people's hearts and the issues of their lives. Other sermons are like bridges from nowhere. They reflect on contemporary issues, but the insights they bring to bear on modern problems and felt needs don't actually arise out of the biblical text. Proper contextualization is the act of bringing sound biblical doctrine all the way over the bridge by reexpressing it in terms coherent to a particular culture. — Timothy J. Keller

Modern reality has got such a hold on us that ... when we attempt to reconstruct the ancient days in our thoughts ... the minor events of our lives tear us away from our meditations, and ... thrust us back into our personal [problems] — Vincent Van Gogh

Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world. Since the Renaissance these modes have worked. As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to work. But now that for huge masses of people these needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really is ... emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty. That, today, is where it is at, and will continue to be at for a long time to come. — Robert M. Pirsig

These are the problems of the modern U.S. combat soldier, the constant worry about overstepping the mark and an American media that delights in trying to knock us down. Which we have done nothing to deserve. Except, perhaps, love our country and everything it stands for. — Marcus Luttrell

But I think that there are things about the United States that aren't really recognized sufficiently, so it's important to remember that until 1945, the United States was a cultural backwater. It wasn't part of the modern world.... So, a good part of the country is still [adhering to] what's been traditional. It's just not part of the modern world. Just take a look at the statistics. The religious fanaticism, there's just nothing like it in the world. I mean, one of the problems with getting people interested in global warming is that about 40 percent of the population thinks that Jesus is coming in 2050, so who cares, you know. — Noam Chomsky

Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows 'what he wants, while he actually wants
what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own. — Erich Fromm

There's an old saying, "We can mess it up and God cleans it up." I haven't noticed a deity of any sort cleaning up our messes. We're going to have to do it ourselves, particularly since we have created most of these problems just by the genius and creativity that we've expressed and experienced here in this modern period. We've done it, and we've got to straighten it out. — Edgar Mitchell

Modern communication loads us with more problems than the human frame can carry. [...] Our grandmothers, and even - with some scrambling - our mothers, lived in a circle small enough to let them implement in action most of the impulses of their hearts and minds. We were brought up in a tradition that has now become impossible, for we have extended our circle throughout space and time. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

We shall see that the problems we have to face concern the possible influence of Babylon, rather than of Egypt, upon Hebrew tradition. And one last example, drawn from the later period, will serve to demonstrate how Babylonian influence penetrated the ancient world and has even left some trace upon modern civilization. It is a fact, though one perhaps not generally realized, that the twelve divisions on the dials of our clocks and watches have a Babylonian, and ultimately a Sumerian, ancestry. For why is it we divide the day into twenty-four hours? We have a decimal system of reckoning, we count by tens; why then should we divide the day and night into twelve hours each, instead of into ten or some multiple of ten? The reason is that the Babylonians divided the day into twelve double-hours; and the Greeks took over their ancient system of time-division along with their knowledge of astronomy and passed it on to us. — Leonard W. King

The theoretical determination of the fine structure constant is certainly the most important of the unsolved problems of modern physics. — Wolfgang Pauli

Planting trees, I myself thought for a long time, was a feel-good thing, a nice but feeble response to our litany of modern-day environmental problems. In the last few years, though, as I have read many dozens of articles and books and interviewed scientists here and abroad, my thinking on the issue has changed. Planting trees may be the single most important ecotechnology that we have to put the broken pieces of our planet back together. — Jim Robbins

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

In recent years our knowledge of modern technology has increased considerably, and as a result we have witnessed remarkable material progress, but there has not been a corresponding increase in human happiness. There is no less suffering in the world today, and there are no fewer problems. Indeed, it might be said that there are now more problems and greater dangers than ever before. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

The cases of great mathematicians with mental illness have enormous resonance for modern pop writers and filmmakers. This has to do mostly with the writers'/directors' own prejudices and receptivities, which in turn are functions of what you could call our era's particular archetypal template. It goes without saying that these templates change over time. The Mentally Ill Mathematician seems now in some ways to be what the Knight Errant, Mortified Saint, Tortured Artist, and Mad Scientist have been for other eras: sort of our Prometheus, the one who goes to forbidden places and returns with gifts we all can use but he alone pays for. That's probably a bit overblown, at least in some cases. But Cantor fits the template better than most. And the reason for this are a lot more interesting than whatever his problems and symptoms were. — David Foster Wallace