Quotes & Sayings About Unsolved Problems

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 time once again it has been my chief aim to make no sacrifice to an appearance of being simple, complete or rounded off, not to disguise problems and not to deny the existence of gaps and uncertainties. In no other scientific field would it be necessary to boast of such modest intentions. They are universally regarded as self-evident; the public expects nothing else. No reader of an account of astronomy will feel disappointed and contemptuous of the science if he is shown the frontiers at which our knowledge of the universe melts into haziness. Only in psychology is it otherwise. There mankind's constitutional unfitness for scientific research comes fully into the open. What people seem to demand of psychology is not progress in knowledge, but satisfactions of some other sort; every unsolved problem, every admitted uncertainty is made into a reproach against it.
Whoever cares for the science of mental life must accept these injustices along with it. — Sigmund Freud

It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, & as-yet unsolved problems. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Life is also a mixture of unsolved problems, ambiguous victories and vague defeats-with very few moments of clear peace. — Hugh Prather

A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones. — Abraham Lincoln

Most successful businesses in the country were started on a kitchen table. As long as people have needs unmet or problems unsolved, there are business opportunities. — Brian Tracy

Success is the ability to solve problems as well. A goal or an objective unachieved, in any area, is merely a problem unsolved. This is why a systematic approach to problem solving, one that works at a higher level and more consistently, is absolutely vital for you to achieve the maximum success that is possible for you. Think — Brian Tracy

Three great problems of the century - the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light - are unsolved; — Victor Hugo

Perhaps there is to be found in Pastrana the key to something which happens in Spain more frequently than is necessary. Past splendor overwhelms and in the end exhausts the people's will; and without force of will, as can be seen in so many cases, by being exclusively occupied with the contemplation of the glories of the past, they leave current problems unsolved. When the belly is empty and the mind filled with golden memories, the golden memories continually retreat and at last, though no one goes so far as to admit it, there is even doubt whether they ever existed and there is nothing left of them but a benevolent and useless cultural residue. — Camilo Jose Cela

The book Dynamic Programming by Richard Bellman is an important, pioneering work in which a group of problems is collected together at the end of some chapters under the heading "Exercises and Research Problems," with extremely trivial questions appearing in the midst of deep, unsolved problems. It is rumored that someone once asked Dr. Bellman how to tell the exercises apart from the research problems, and he replied: "If you can solve it, it is an exercise; otherwise it's a research problem." — Donald Knuth

Empathic listening takes time, but it doesn't take anywhere near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you're already miles down the road; to redo; to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems; to deal with the results of not giving people psychological air. — Stephen Covey

Every solution of a problem raises new unsolved problems. — Karl Popper

Unsolved problems on the inside of a person stop success more often than problems on the outside of a person. — Orrin Woodward

Play permits the child to resolve in symbolic form unsolved problems of the past and to cope directly or symbolically with present concerns. It is also his most significant tool for preparing himself for the future and its tasks. — Bruno Bettelheim

Theorems are fun especially when you are the prover, but then the pleasure fades. What keeps us going are the unsolved problems. — Carl Pomerance

God left the world unfinished; the pictures unpainted, the songs unsung, and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys of creation. — Thomas S. Monson

It is impressive to see a person who has been battered by life in many ways, who is torn by a variety of unsolved problems, who may be alienated from many aspects of the self-but who is still fighting, still struggling, still striving to find the path to a fulfilling existence, moved by the wisdom of knowing, "I am more than my problems." — Nathaniel Branden

The child knows only that he engages in play because it is enjoyable. He isn't aware of his need to play
a need which has its source in the pressure of unsolved problems. Nor does he know that his pleasure in playing comes from a deep sense of well-being that is the direct result of feeling in control of things, in contrast to the rest of his life, which is managed by his parents or other adults. — Bruno Bettelheim

Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge. — Andrew Wiles

We know a great deal, but our ignorance is sobering and boundless. With each step forward, with each problem which we solve, we not only discover new and unsolved problems, but we also discover that where we believed that we were standing on firm and safe ground, all things are, in truth, insecure and in a state of flux. — Karl Popper

Our teaching of mathematics revolves around a fundamental conflict. Rightly or wrongly, students are required to master a series of mathematical concepts and techniques, and anything that might divert them from doing so is deemed unnecessary. Putting mathematics into its cultural context, explaining what is has done for humanity, telling the story of its historical development, or pointing out the wealth of unsolved problems or even the existence of topics that do not make it into school textbooks leaves less time to prepare for the exam. So most of these things aren't discussed. — Ian Stewart

All Nature bristles with the marks of interrogation-among the grass and the petals of flowers, amidst the feathers of birds and the hairs of mammals, on mountain and moorland, in sea and sky-everywhere. It is one of the joys of life to discover those marks of interrogation, these unsolved and half-solved problems and try to answer their questions. — J. Arthur Thomson

There is no counting the unsolved problems of Natural History. — J. Arthur Thomson

God left us the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of unfinished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation. — Thomas S. Monson

Whenever my mind is muddied by fears, longings, and unsolved problems and my body poised to fight or flee, I try to picture that jar of pond water. As I 'quiet myself' my anxieties sink and clarity emerges: there is no place that God is not, no calamity to be faced without Jesus by my side, and nothing in all creation that can separate me from God's love. — Esther Hizsa

All the more recent work on alkaptonuria has ... strengthened the belief that the homogentisic acid excreted is derived from tyrosine, but why alkaptonuric individuals pass the benzene ring of their tyrosine unbroken and how and where the peculiar chemical change from tyrosine to homogentisic acid is brought about, remain unsolved problems. — Archibald E. Garrod

We have all the information in the universe at our fingertips, while our most basic problems go unsolved year after year ... All around, we see dazzling technological change, but no progress. — George Packer

Although I completed two years of internship in various small hospitals, I decided against continuing my medical training. I was much more fascinated by the unsolved problems of medicine than by practicing it. — Gunter Blobel

Experience hobbles progress and leads to abandonment of difficult problems; it encourages the initiated to walk on the shady side of the street in the direction of experiences that have been pleasant. Youth without experience attacks the unsolved problems which maturer age with experience avoids, and from the labors of youth comes progress. Youth has dreams and visions, and will not be denied. — William James Mayo

Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. — Virginia Woolf

An unsolved problem bothers one's mind, just as a small stone in the shoe,until an idea for solving the problem comes to mind. — Eraldo Banovac

I believe that each young person is different from any other who has ever lived, as different as his fingerprints: that he could bring to the world a wonderful and special way of solving unsolved problems, that in his special way, he can be great. — Edwin Land

And custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century - the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light - are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world; - in other words, — Victor Hugo

As long as we have unsolved problems, unfulfilled desires, and a mustard seed of faith, we have all we need for a vibrant prayer life. — John Ortberg

Although the cooking of food presents some unsolved problems, the quick warming of cooked food and the thawing of frozen food both open up some attractive uses ... There is no important reason why the the housewife of the future should not purchase completely frozen meals at the grocery store just as she buys quick frozen vegetables. With a quick heating, high-frequency unit in her kitchen, food preparation from a pre-cooked, frozen meal becomes a simple matter. — Chauncey Guy Suits

Pushing too hard will only make things freeze up. How many great problems have gone unsolved because men didn't know enough, or have enough faith in the creative process and in themselves, to let go for the whole mind to work at it? — Daniel Keyes

There are still many unsolved problems about bird life, among which are the age that birds attain, the exact time at which some birds acquire their adult dress, and the changes which occur in this with years. Little, too, is known about the laws and routes of bird migration, and much less about the final disposition of the untold thousands which are annually produced. — Paul Bartsch

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

How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge ... We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved ... God is no stop-gap; he must be recognized as the center of life, not when we are at the end of our resources. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Unsolved problems are where you'll find opportunity. Energy is one sector with extremely urgent unsolved problems. — Peter Thiel

The unsolved problems of the physical world now seem even more formidable than those solved in the twentieth century.

Though in application it works splendidly, we do not even understand the physical meaning of quantum mechanics, much less how it might be united with general relativity.

We don't know why the dimensionless constants (ratios of masses of elementary particles, ratios of strength of gravitational to electric forces, fine structure constant, etc.) have the values they do, unless we appeal to the implausible anthropic principle, which seems like a regression to Aristotelian teleology. — Gerald Holton

We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We are accustomed to look for the gross and immediate effects and to ignore all else. Unless this appears promptly and in such obvious form that it cannot be ignored, we deny the existence of hazard. Even research men suffer from the handicap of inadequate methods of detecting the beginnings of injury. The lack of sufficiently delicate methods to detect injury before symptoms appear is one of the great unsolved problems in medicine. — Rachel Carson