A Quote by John Maynard Smith

It is an occupational risk of biologists to claim, towards the end of their careers, that the problems which they have not solved are insoluble.

John Maynard Smith

Quote Topics

Careers Claim End Problems Risk Solved Towards Which

Quote Author

John Maynard Smith
British - Scientist
January 6, 1920 - April 19, 2004

The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This 'outgrowing', as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person's horizon, and through this widening of view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency.

Carl Jung

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

Carl Jung

Some major problems can be solved by our political process and our leaders. Others can be solved only when there is popular demand and insistence and politicians feel at risk of unemployment if they ignore the groundswell.

James Stone

To my mind, the best SF addresses itself to problems of the here and now, or even to problems which have never been solved and never will be solved - I'm thinking of Philip K. Dick's work here, dealing with questions of reality, for example.

John Sladek

Most practising scientists focus on 'bite-sized' problems that are timely and tractable. The occupational risk is then to lose sight of the big picture.

Martin Rees

Some of the big philosophical problems have been solved by science, at least to a 1st approximation. Examples: the problems of matter, and mind. Only philosophical reactionaries, like Noam Chomsky, claim that they are and will remain mysteries.

Mario Bunge

Our problems are not solved by physical force, by hatred, by warOur problems are solved by loving kindness by gentleness, by joy

Gautama Buddha

I tended to write poems about both social and spiritual problems, and some problems one doesn't really want to solve, and so the problems themselves are solved. You certainly don't want to solve problems in poems that haven't been solved in the world.

C. K. Williams

If explicit metadata is a real problem, it raises problems that just can't be solved. It's not that we're not good at it; it's the problems cannot be solved because we're not going to agree about these deep questions of how we organize.

David Weinberger

Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created.

Albert Einstein

Had the Hebrews not been disturbed in their progress a thousand and more years ago, they would have solved all the great problems of civilization which are being solved now under all the difficulties imposed by the spirit of the Middle Ages.

Isaac Mayer Wise

If you come from mathematics, as I do, you realize that there are many problems, even classical problems, which cannot be solved by computation alone.

Roger Penrose

There are no solved problems; there are only problems that are more or less solved.

Henri Poincare

Some of our problems can no more be solved correctly by majority opinion than can a problem in arithmetic and there are few problems that cannot be solved according to what is just and right without resort to popular opinion.