Not Our Problem Quotes & Sayings

It takes a lot of weapons to do good works (as Richard the Lionhearted could have told us). And this is not just a Somali problem. We have poverty and deprivation in our own country. Try standing unarmed on a street corner in Compton handing out twenty-dollar bills and see how long you last. — P. J. O'Rourke

Not every girl has a bad-boy problem. Some of my friends get into relationships constantly. Others cheat all the time, or run away. Some get jealous. Some think they are too undateable to even try. Our dating pool is a circus of fuckups, misfits, and past mistakes that we keep on making. The brand of baggage you're carrying on your back is the issue. But most of all, I think we fear the same thing. I think that thing is love. Real love. Think of your first love. Think of how Bambi-like you were, prancing around all excited and in love with everything. Then think of how that happiness was beaten to death with a hatchet, spit on, shit on, leaving you cold. If you watch something you care about get destroyed, you're not going to want to go back to that place, no matter how pleasant it ever was. — Alida Nugent

The problem with so much religious communication is that it aims at changing our minds. The result is that we can hear the message of the preacher without necessarily heeding the message; we can listen to the "truth" and agree with it, yet not change in response to it. — Peter Rollins

The law provides expert diagnosis of our sin problem, which is absolutely essential. But the law does not provide the cure to our sin problem. Only Jesus can save us from our sin problem. — John Paul Warren

We have to start encouraging women to get into math and science early on in life ... But to just say TechCrunch is perpetuating the problem because there aren't enough women speakers at our events is just a way to get attention and not solve the problem. So do we want to solve the problem, or do we want to just pick on me? — Michael Arrington

Writing of only one small part of the broader problem, namely the single-minded pursuit of individualistic 'rights,' [Don] Feder is not wrong to conclude:

Absent a delicate balance--rights and duties, freedom and order--the social fabric begins to unravel. The rights explosion of the past three decades has taken us on a rapid descent to a culture without civility, decency, or even that degree of discipline necessary to maintain an advanced industrial civilization. Our cities are cesspools, our urban schools terrorist training camps, our legislatures brothels where rights are sold to the highest electoral bidder. — D. A. Carson

The term 'black' was given a rebirth by the black youth revolt. As reborn, it does not refer to the particular color of any particular person, but to the attitude of pride and devotion to the race whose homeland from times immemorial was called 'The Land of the Blacks.' Almost overnight our youngsters made 'black' coequal with 'white' in respectability, and challenged the anti-black Negroes to decide on which side they stood. This was no problem for many who are light or even near-white in complexion, for they themselves were among the first to proclaim with pride, 'call me black!' Those who hate the term but hold the majority of leadership positions feel compelled to use it to protect their leadership roles. — Chancellor Williams

America has a terrible educational problem in the sense that we have too many youngsters not finishing school. A third of our kids don't finish high school, 50 percent of minorities don't finish high school. — Colin Powell

Maybe he does show himself to us, but we don't see. Maybe it's not our senses that are the problem, but our minds. — Ted Dekker

The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy - not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side. — Eric Hobsbawm

To speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash of civilizations, and we're deluding ourselves with euphemisms. We're talking about Islam being a religion of peace that's been hijacked by extremists. If ever there were a religion that's not a religion of peace, it is Islam. — Sam Harris

Diversity, not uniformity, is what works. Our problem is not that people are living a bad way but rather that they're all living the same way. The earth can accommodate many people living in a voraciously wasteful and pollutive way, it just can't accommodate all of us living that way. — Daniel Quinn

I don't think the press has done a very good job dealing with government spending.The Defense Department with the $9,500 toilet seat, that's not the problem anymore. Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are the problem. That's us. That's our generation. There the press never says a word. — Dave Barry

If I did not believe, if I did not make what is called an act of faith (and each act of faith increases our faith, and our capacity for faith), if I did not have faith that the works of mercy do lighten the sum total of suffering in the world, so that those who are suffering on both sides of this ghastly struggle somehow mysteriously find their pain lifted and some balm of consolation poured on their wounds, if I did not believe these things, the problem of evil would indeed be overwhelming. — Dorothy Day

What's wrong with our children? Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating. Adults telling children to not be violent while marketing and glorifying violence ... I believe that adult hypocrisy is the biggest problem children face in America. — Marian Wright Edelman

Yes, I'm satisfied, but the problem is you're not, and never will be. You're insecure, afraid of losing everything you've achieved; you don't know how to quit once you're ahead. You'll end up destroying yourself. You're killing our marriage and my love. — Paulo Coelho

The problem with our education system is not that parents do not have a choice. The problem is that inequities continue to exist. — Patsy Mink

The problem was that Panama technically belonged to Colombia, which refused to sign a treaty leasing it to the United States. So Roosevelt sent a gunboat filled with marines down to Panama, just on the off chance that a revolution might suddenly break out, and darned if one didn't, two days later. Not only that, but the leaders of the new nation of Panama-talk about lucky breaks!-were absolutely thrilled to have the United States build a canal there. 'Really, it's our pleasure,' they told the marines, adding, 'Don't shoot.' — Dave Barry

If you put on a lousy production with white actors, it's lousy. There is a problem, or can be, at this stage of our social evolution, with mixing the casts. It may not be a question of race so much as class. You would rarely find a black man in a high executive position where he was swinging his weight around. — Howard Schultz

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

...spiritual dryness is not a problem. It only seems a problem because it's such a contrast with the good feelings of the honeymoon stage. ...this night will continue to go on, often getting worse, throughout our life. But if we persevere in our spiritual journey, we will be able to perceive in it positive meaning and learn to understand it. Then we can move beyond it to the freedom that places our feelings in proper perspective. — Monks Of New Skete

That is the future, and it is probably nearer than we think. But our primary problem as universities is not engineering that future. We must rise above the obsession with quantity of information and speed of transmission, and recognize that the key issue for us is our ability to organize this information once it has been amassed - to assimilate it, find meaning in it, and assure its survival for use by generations to come. — Vartan Gregorian

One of the things that adds tension to our lives is small frustrations. Losing car keys can give you a panic attack. Not being able to find a comb when you get out of the shower, losing scissors and nail clippers, can make you fight with your roommate. The problem is that we think that these things are not supposed to happen to us. And that's what makes us tense. We think we can avoid these frustrations by making ourselves and others be more careful. I like to take the opposite tack-to assume that these things are a part of life and that they will happen no matter what. — Jennifer James

Not our problem. We don't have a dead blue hooker in our apartment. — Christopher Moore

What we are confronted with now is the problem posed by the economic and symbolic structure of television. Those who run television do not limit our access to information but in fact widen it. Our Ministry of Culture is Huxleyan, not Orwellian. It does everything possible to encourage us to watch continuously. But what we watch is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical and noncontextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment. In America, we are never denied the opportunity to entertain ourselves. — Neil Postman

Part of our skittishness about Christian perfection is linguistic confusion. The English word "perfect" has absorbed the Greek notion of "teleos". When the Greeks looked at a building's blueprint, they pictured the building whole and complete. They envisioned the blueprint finished down to the bathroom tile and announced, "Ah, this is perfect." The problem is that "teleos" suggests that perfection is something we can build or achieve. The Hebrews looked at the same blueprint more practically. They envisioned the process of building from hard hats to hammers, from scaffolding to skylights. "Ah," the Hebrews said. "This is perfect." The Hebrews and the early Christians understood perfection as a process, not a product. Our identity as Christians depends upon life lived in relationship with God, not upon the quality of our achievements. — Kenda Creasy Dean

I've been challenged by the action-oriented approach to Scripture proposed by Peter Marshall, former chaplain of the United States Senate. I wonder what would happen if we all agreed to read one of the Gospels until we came to a place that told us to do something, then went out to do it, and only after we had done it, began reading again? There are aspects of the Gospel that are puzzling and difficult to understand. But our problems are not centered around the things we don't understand, but rather in the things we do understand, the things we could not possibly misunderstand. Our problem is not so much that we don't know what we should do. We know perfectly well, but we don't want to do it.19 — Mark Batterson

19. I wrote in my notebook that even if all the possible scientific questions are answered, our problem is still not touched at all. — E.L. Doctorow

All I'm saying is, technology can potentially do better than nature because of the very fact that it's not always a matter of life or death. If an organism has been fine-tuned to maximize its overall reproductive success, that's not the same thing as embodying the ideal solution to every individual problem it faces. Evolution appears inventive to us because it's had time to try so many possibilities, but it has no margin at all for real risks, let alone anything truly whimsical. We can celebrate our own beautiful mistakes. All evolution can do is murder them. — Greg Egan

It is not the mountain that is our problem but the absence of knowledge on how to deal with
the mountain. — Sunday Adelaja

People exaggerate Corruption in Nigeria. It is not
even our first or second problem, maybe the third — Atiku Abubakar

My dear woman, our greatest problem is
that almost everything is a goddamned code. We do not know what is real any more. Every gesture is symbolic. A man cannot shit short of some pundit finding hidden meaning in it. Even having children is a metaphor. Hence, we cannot trust ourselves; and, therefore, we do not trust anybody. No my dear, I do not believe in codes, and even if I did I certainly would not use one in my sleep! (from the play, Sixteen Words For Water) — Billy Marshall Stoneking

'In Praise of Slowness' chronicles the global trend towards deceleration that has come to be known as the Slow Movement. Don't worry, though: it is not a Luddite rant. I love speed. Going fast can be fun, liberating and productive. The problem is that our hunger for speed, for cramming more and more into less and less time, has gone too far. — Carl Honore

When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant "government of the people" but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term "people" to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America's problem is not its betrayal of "government of the people," but the means by which "the people" acquired their names. This — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a spending problem. Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a priority problem. It is time that we begin to fine tune our focus and decide what the priority of government ought to be. — Marsha Blackburn

The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in — Thich Nhat Hanh

We also have a responsibility not to let ourselves be judged. We do not have to accept others' evaluations of our worth, nor are we obligated to believe in their superiority. Whichever role we are assigned, we can stop the game by refusing to play our expected part. When someone suggests that our recent behavior has undone our right to exist, a useful question to ask is, "What do you want? What can I do to make the situation better?" This often reduces the Judge's voice to silence, because what the Judge really wants- but cannot admit- is to make you feel bad, not to get the floor clean. When we feel secure in our inherent value, we do not have to argue about our worth as human beings. Instead, we can attempt to solve the problem. — Starhawk

The massive interest in self-esteem and self-worth exists because it is trying to help us with a real problem. The problem is that we really are not okay. There is no reason why we should feel great about ourselves. We truly are deficient. The meager props of the self-esteem teaching will eventually collapse as people realize that their problem is much deeper. The problem is, in part, our nakedness before God. — Edward T. Welch

The American family is not simply changing; it is getting weaker ... Family decline drives some of our most urgent social problems ... The heart of the family problem lies in the steady breakup of the two-parent home. — David Popenoe

In the terms of our Great Society the Hell's Angels and their ilk are losers
dropouts, failures and malcontents. They are rejects looking for a way to get even with a world in which they are only a problem.
The Hell's Angels are not visionaries, but diehards, and if they are the forerunners or the vanguard of anything it is not the "moral revolution" in vogue on college campuses, but a fast-growing legion of young unemployables whose untapped energy will inevitably find the same kind of destructive outlet that "outlaws" like the Hell's Angels have been finding for years. — Hunter S. Thompson

My darling sweetheart, you ask me why I love you. I do not know. All I know is that I do love you, and beyond measure. Why do you love me? Surely a more inscrutable problem? You do not know. No one ever knows. 'The heart has its reasons which the reason knows not of.' We love in obedience to a powerful gravitation of our beings, and then try to explain it by recapitulating one another's character just as a man forms his opinions first and then thinks out reasons in support.

What delights me is to recall that our love has evolved. It did not suddenly spring into existence like some beautiful sprite. It developed slowly to perfection. It was forged in the white heat of our experiences. That is why it will always remain. — W.N.P. Barbellion

The problem with trying to find your happiness through avoidance is the nature of reality. Reality simply does not allow us to evade unwanted experiences. Sure, we might be able to escape a few {...] but the evasive life often comes at a cost, like having to live your life in terror. Even if we can successfully ward off some terrifying experiences, we can not advert them all. Particularly, the most unpleasant ones: sickness, old age and death. If our strategy has been to flea unpleasant circumstances, when they come to meet us - as they surely will - our suffering will be great indeed. — Mark W. Muesse

People with mental illness are very much like people without mental illness only more so. What we lose with a psychotic episode is the comforting assurance that we can't lose our mind. When most people look down they see solid ground. When I look down, I'm not so sure.
Crazy thoughts are not the problem. Everyone has crazy thoughts. Hallucinations and delusions tend to catch the attention but aren't the problem. The problem is that the world becomes discontinuous. We can't attend to the world and take care of ourselves. So others try to take care of us and they do an imperfect job of it. There is no substitute for being well. — Mark Vonnegut

If we were all looking for something 'easy come and easy go', then all of our lives would be easy. The problem is that we look for something real, don't we? And it is this longing for what is real, that makes finding the right person to be the most difficult task in the world. You can marry someone and promise the rest of your life to the person, only to find out later that this person makes you feel lonely. If we had no innate longing for true love and for true partnership, then none of us would have any problems! Therefore, the most frightening question to ponder upon, is, 'what if true love does not exist; what if the real stuff isn't real at all?' In such a case, life would be meaningless. I suppose I would rather believe in love relentlessly, than live in this world meaninglessly. — C. JoyBell C.

We should embrace our immigrant roots and recognize that newcomers to our land are not part of the problem, they are part of the solution. — Roger Mahony

Two-factor economics makes it clear that our economic problem is not what one-factor (labor-centric) thinkers assert: an inequitable distribution of income. It is an inequitable distribution of productive power, from which an unworkable distribution of income results. — Louis O. Kelso

There's still another problem which puzzles a lot of people - whether or not a baby will come within the budget. Our sentimental advice is to have one anyway, if you want one and have been through the marriage ceremony. The people who wait till they can afford a baby seldom have one at all except by surprise. — Marjorie Hillis

The ISIS situation is not just "their problem to deal with in the Middle East," it's OUR PROBLEM because it involves people Jesus died for. — Perry Noble

When man comes to the realization that he is not the "favorite" of God; that he was not specially created, that the universe was not made for his benefit, and that he is subject to the same laws of nature as all other forms of life, then, and not until then, will he understand that he must rely upon himself, and himself alone, for whatever benefits he is to enjoy; and devote his time and energies to helping himself and his fellow men to meet the exigencies of life and to set about to solve the difficult and intricate problems of living.
The recognition of a problem is the first step to its solution - We are not "fallen" angels, nor were we "created" perfect.
On the contrary, we are the product of millions of years of an unpurposed evolution. We are the descendants and inheritors of all the defects of our primitive ancestry - the evolution of the myriad forms of life from the infinitesimal to the mammoth - from the worm to the dinosaur. — Joseph Lewis

When God was creating heaven and earth, and there came what seemed like a problem: darkness and formlessness, He did not talk problem, instead, He spoke solution: 'And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light'. May we instead of making problems our speech, think and speak solutions! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Here is the endurance and the faith of the saints. Revelation 13:10 How does a believer get her thoughts to bow to the truth? By believing, speaking, and applying truth as a lifestyle. This step is something we live, not just something we do. We can't just shout, "Sit!" and expect the dog to stay there for a week. We've worked a long time to get that dog to sit, but it's still not going to sit forever. We don't achieve victory once and never have to bother with that thought problem again. Our thought life is something we'll be working on the rest of our lives in our desire to be godly. — Beth Moore

You cannot fix people who will not take feedback, because from their perspective, they do not have a problem. — Henry Cloud

The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually corporately, tending to do the Lord's work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The Buddha never intended to make desire itself the problem. When he said craving causes suffering, he was referring not to our natural inclination as living beings to have wants and needs, but to our habit of clinging to experience that must, by nature, pass away. — Tara Brach

The body thinks it's real. That's the problem of modern physics. How to convince our minds that they're not our own. — Dominic Smith

These examples, and those that surround us every day, are why creational thinking, not critical thinking, should be our ultimate goal in education. Critical thinking is a skill that allows us to steer a valuable course through a known problem. It engages a problem-solving skill set but stops short of what is possible. If problem solving and critical thinking are the goals of education, the bar is too low. Creational thinking, the use of content while branching into the unknown, leads to the possibility of truly elegant solutions. That is where the bar needs to be, particularly in light of the challenges that lie ahead for us. — Grant Lichtman

We are responsible for the problem and we must be held responsible for the solution. It will indeed be a sad indictment on our species if rhinos and elephants are no more. And that day will come much sooner than we think if we do not take action. — Brian Connell

The problem is not that America does not have energy. The problem is that our government - alone among the governments of the world - will not allow its own people to recover the energy that they possess. — Jim Talent

Today our problem is not making miracles, but managing them. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Our first problem is that our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered. We're more concerned about our own "victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve God's heart. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success-oriented, not because we know it's offensive to God. — Jerry Bridges

True love, unlike popular sentimental substitutes, is willing to suffer. Love is not "luv." Love is the cross. Our problem at first, the sheer problem of suffering, was a cross without Christ. We must never fall into the opposite and equal trap of a Christ without a cross. — Peter Kreeft

The Christian faith, simply stated, reminds us that our fundamental problem is not moral; rather, our fundamental problem is spiritual. It is not just that we are immoral, but that a moral life alone cannot bridge what separates us from God. Herein lies the cardinal difference between the moralizing religions and Jesus' offer to us. Jesus does not offer to make bad people good but to make dead people alive. — Ravi Zacharias

An observer will see the bizarre developments of behavior only in alien cultures, not his own. Nevertheless this is obviously a local and temporary bias. There is no reason to suppose that any one culture has seized upon an eternal sanity and will stand in history as a solitary solution of the human problem. Even the next generation knows better. Our only scientific course is to consider our own culture, so far as we are able, as one example among innumerable others of the variant configurations of human culture. — Ruth Benedict

The world would be a much better place if people treated one another with decency and respect. There is no reason to be cruel to someone who is down or has any sort of problem, physical or otherwise. Trust me, man. I know. And today, if you're being bullied, you do not have to just suck it up. If you have or your child has a problem, tell someone in authority and talk about the pain. There are a lot of people out there who provide helpful guidance and support, like counselors, spiritual leaders, teachers, coaches, etc., all you need to do is reach out. Bullying is a problem that has really left its mark on our society, and I know there is more we can all do to stop it. — Dick Vitale

The problem is, we live in a society where all that interests us is power and money. So we don't have any interest in our children, and what we leave for our children is not important. — Sebastiao Salgado

We're in our own world, and we're in the world that has been given us outside, and the problem is to achieve3 a harmonious relationship between the two. I come into this society, so I've got to live in terms of this society. It's ridiculous not to live in terms of this society because, unless I do, I'm not living. But I mustn't allow this society to dictate to me how I should live. One has to build up one's own system that may violate the expectations of the society, and sometimes society doesn't accept that. But the task of life is to live within the field provided by the society that is really supporting you. — Joseph Campbell

In schools the main problem is not the absence of innovations but the presence of too many disconnected ... piecemeal, superficially adorned projects ... We are over our heads. — Michael Fullan

The goal of marriage is not happiness, it is holiness ... There is no mechanism whereby God can sanctify a person more than having them live in close proximity to another imperfect person.
... Our fundamental problem is that we are selfish. Marriage is the means whereby God eradicates our selfishness because it is not about "me" anymore, i t is about "we. — Mark Batterson

The fundamental problem is that every technology embeds the ideologies of its creators! Who made the Internet? The military! The Internet is the product of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency! We call it DARPA for short! Who worked for DARPA? DARPA was a bunch of men! Not a single woman worked on the underlying technologies that fuel our digital universe! Men are the shit of the world and all of our political systems and philosophies were created and devised without the input of women! Half of the world's population lives beneath systems of government and technological innovation into which their gender had zero input! Democracy is a bullshit ideology that a bunch of slaveholding Greek men constructed between rounds of beating their wives! All the presumed ideologies of men were taken for inescapable actualities and designed into the Internet! Packet switching is an incredible evil! — Jarett Kobek

Our problem with limited resources is not primarily overpopulation; it is greed. Our problem with pollution is not the invention of fluorocarbons or mass transport; it is irresponsibility. The loss of an acre of forest every second, the mass slaughter of elephants for their ivory, the extinction of entire species of plants, insects and animals all over the world is not something that "just happens" because there are more of us human beings. It happens because the race of ruling beings put in charge has almost wholly lost its sense of stewardship. We have turned away from God. — Winkie Pratney

Forgiveness may be described as a decision to make four promises:
"I will not think about this incident."
"I will not bring up this incident again or use it against you."
"I will not talk to others about this incident."
"I will not allow this incident to stand between us or hinder our personal relationship."
By making and keeping these promises, you tear down the walls that stand between you and your offender. You promise not to dwell on or brood over the problem, nor to punish by holding the person at a distance. You clear the way for your relationship to develop unhindered by memories of past wrongs. This is exactly what God does for us, and it is what he commands us to do for others. — Ken Sande

Running out of energy in the long run is not the problem ... The bind comes during the next 10 years: getting over our dependence on crude oil. — Kenneth S. Deffeyes

As our initial click fraud research study showed last year, there is an obvious problem in the online advertising world. The challenge is that I'm not sure anyone really knows the extent of the click fraud problem. — Flint McGlaughlin

We deny the severity of our loved one's problem not because we are naive, but because we can't know. — David Sheff

We need not wait for the world to become more mystical; the world is mystical. Our problem is not that the world lacks magic; our problem is that we don't believe in its magic. We do not show up fully for life, and then wonder why life is not showing up more fully for us. — Marianne Williamson

When we ask we are owning our needs. Asking for love, comfort or understanding is a transaction between two people. You are saying: I have a need. It's not your problem. It's not your responsibility. You don't have to respond, but I'd like something from you.
This frees the other person to connect with you freely and without obligation. When we own that our needs are our responsibility we allow others to love us because we have something to offer. Asking is a far cry from demanding. When we demand love, we destroy it. — Henry Cloud

The main problem in the Christian life is that we have not thought out the deep implications of the gospel, we have not 'used' the gospel in and on all parts of our life. — Timothy Keller

We should concentrate our work not only to a separated housing problem but housing involved in our daily work and all the other functions of the city. — Alvar Aalto

It's easy to give God a list of excuses for not feeling worthy or as capable as someone else, in our service to him. The problem is that God doesn't call those who are unprepared or incapable. He calls those who have the talent and ability to serve. He has it all planned out for us. Our challenge is to accept his calling and move out in faith believing in his promises of help and support. — Diane Goold

Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never really was any problem. — C.S. Lewis

America is still a frontier country of wide open spaces. Our closeness to nature is one reason why our problem is not repression but regression; our notorious violence is the constant eruption of primi-tiveness, of anarchic individualism. — Camille Paglia

Beyond our perceptional distortions, there is a problem with logic itself. How can someone have no clue yet be able to hold a set of perfectly sound and coherent viewpoints that match the observations and abide by every single possible rule of logic? Consider that two people can hold incompatible beliefs based on the exact same data. Does this mean that there are possible families of explanations and that each of these can be equally perfect and sound? Certainly not. One may have a million ways to explain things, but the true explanation is unique, whether or not it is within our reach. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

This is a patriarchal truism that most people in our society want to deny. Whenever women thinkers, especially advocates of feminism, speak about the widespread problem of male violence, folks are eager to stand up and make the point that most men are not violent. They refuse to acknowledge that masses of boys and men have been programmed from birth on to believe that at some point they must be violent, whether psychologically or physically, to prove that they are men. — Bell Hooks

Our problem today is not how to expropriate the expropriators but, rather, how to arrange matters so that the masses, dispossessed by industrial society in capitalist and socialist systems, can regain property. For this reason alone, the alternative between capitalism and socialism is false-not only because neither exists anywhere in its pure state anyhow, but because we have here twins, each wearing different hats. — Hannah Arendt

Man has always been dexterous at confusing evil with good. That was Adam's and Eve's problem, and it is our problem today. If evil were not made to appear attractive, there would be no such thing as temptation. — Billy Graham

At any rate', said I, 'we can now state the problem accurately. People usually think the problem is how to reconcile what we now know about the size of the universe with our traditional ideas of religion. That turns out not to be the problem at all. The real problem is this. The enormous size of the universe and the insignificance of the earth were known for centuries, and no one ever dreamed that they had any bearing on the religious question. Then, less than a hundred years ago, they are suddenly trotted out as an argument against Christianity. And the people who trot them out carefully hush up the fact that they were known long ago. Don't you think that all you atheists are strangely unsuspicious people? — C.S. Lewis

If we go to the 1940s, Nazi Germany - look, we saw it in Britain. Neville Chamberlain told the British people: Accept the Nazis. Yes, they will dominate the continent of Europe, but that is not our problem. Let's appease them. Why? Because it can't be done. We cannot possibly stand against them. — Ted Cruz

Our regular fitness programme means that the race lasting longer than others should not be a problem, but something you have to prepare for in Singapore is ensuring you always keep well-hydrated, as the heat and humidity can easily dehydrate you. — Romain Grosjean

An estimated 3.5 million people with serious mental illnesses are going without treatment (Kessler et al. 2001). That is scandalous. But mentally ill people are not the cause of the violence problem. If schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression were cured, our society's problem of violence would diminish by only about 4% (Swanson 1994). — Daniel W. Webster

I do not mean that there is anything intellectually contemptible in being formally "godless"
that is, in rejecting all religious dogmas and in refusing to believe in the God those dogmas describe.
One might very well conclude, for instance, that the world contains far too much misery for the pious idea of a good, loving, and just God to be taken very seriously, and that any alleged creator of the universe in which children suffer and die hardly deserves our devotion.
It is an affective
not a strictly logical
position to hold, but it is an intelligible one, with a certain sublime moral purity to it; I myself find it deeply compelling; and it is entirely up to each person to judge whether he or she finds any particular religion's answer to the "problem of evil" either adequate or credible. — David Bentley Hart

Our problem is that sound is not important in our culture. We know the world from the visual, not from the other senses. I had to be taught other ways of understanding. — Bernie Krause

Ultimately, the question was about the nature of the dunya as a place of fleeting moments and temporary attachments. As a place where people are with you today and leave or die tomorrow. But this reality hurts our very being because it goes against our nature. We, as humans, are made to seek, love, and strive for what is perfect and what is permanent. We are made to seek what's eternal. We seek this because we were not made for this life. Our first and true home was Paradise: a land that is both perfect and eternal. So the yearning for that type of life is a part of our being. The problem is that we try to find that here. And so we create ageless creams and cosmetic surgery in a desperate attempt to hold on - in an attempt to mold this world into what it is not, and will never be. — Yasmin Mogahed

I believe that our society's "mistake-phobia" is crippling, a problem that begins in most elementary schools, where we learn to learn what we are taught rather than to form our own goals and to figure out how to achieve them. We are fed with facts and tested and those who make the fewest mistakes are considered to be the smart ones, so we learn that it is embarrassing to not know and to make mistakes. Our education system spends virtually no time on how to learn from mistakes, yet this is critical to real learning. — Ray Dalio

African cinema doesn't have an African industry at all and that's where our problem arises. We come to all of these initiatives with a lot of suspicion because we're so inhabited by the notion of being colonized, the post-colonial thought that someone wants us to do something that is their interest and not ours and even it's not true, there's the suspicion of it like where is this going? — Jihan El-Tahri

The steep ride up the and down the energy curve is the most abnormal thing that has ever happened in human history. Most of human history is a no-growth situation. Our culture is built on growth and that phase of human history is almost over and we are not prepared for it. Our biggest problem is not the end of our resources. That will be gradual. Our biggest problem is a cultural problem. We don't know how to cope with it. — M. King Hubbert

The problem with deterrence - apparently sometimes forgotten by our former presidents - is that it is not static, but a creature of the moment, captive to impression, and nursed on action, not talk. It must be maintained hourly and can erode or be lost with a single act of failed nerve, despite all the braggadocio of threatened measures. And, once gone, the remedies needed for its restoration are always more expensive, deadly - and controversial - than would have been its simple maintenance. — Victor Davis Hanson

The issue is not the thing, but rather our approach to the thing. Same as with food. Our temptation is to objectify the problem, trying to locate sin in the stuff - in the tobacco, in the alcohol, in the gun, in the donut - instead of where sin is actually located, which is right under the breastbone. — Douglas Wilson

I think sometimes I might scare the editors, because they might feel they're getting old and they're not understanding it. The problem lies on their side of the fence, not mine. I come from a different era and I design clothes for our era. — Alexander McQueen

The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance - almost is the revelation of ignorance. Our knowledge of the world instructs us first of all that the world is greater than our knowledge of it. To those who rejoice in the abundance and intricacy in Creation, this is a source of joy, as it is to those who rejoice in freedom ...
To those would-be solvers of "the human problem," who hope for knowledge equal to (capable of controlling) the world, it is a source of unremitting defeat and bewilderment. The evidence is overwhelming that knowledge does not solve "the human problem." Indeed, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests - with Genesis - that knowledge is the problem. Or perhaps we should say instead that all our problems tend to gather under two questions about knowledge: Having the ability and desire to know, how and what should we learn? And, having learned, how and for what should we use what we know? (pg. 183, People, Land, and Community) — Wendell Berry

It is not a dirty word, 'feminism'. I just think that women belong in the human population with the same rights as everybody else ... The problem is, 'A feminist looks like this, or is like that'. We are taught not to like ourselves as women, we are taught what we're supposed to look like what our measurements are supposed to be. I never hear what measurements men are supposed to be. Just women. — Cyndi Lauper