A Quote by Sigmund Freud
As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working in solitude.
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Solitude is one of our great superpowers... Solitude is the key to being able to make effective decisions and then having the courage of convictions to stand behind those decisions.
Continually one faces the horrible matter of making decisions. The solution is, as far as possible, to avoid conscious rational decisions and choices; simply to do what you find yourself doing; to float in the great current of life with as little friction as possible; to allow things to settle themselves, as indeed they do with the most infallible certainty.
It is much easier to make intellectual messes than it is to clarify complicated issues, especially when real solutions would challenge the status quo and require much careful thought across many fields of knowledge. Problems of climatic change, biotic impoverishment, population growth, and the choices to be made by various technologies and the transition to a sustainable and decent society with an economy that works over the long-term are difficult, complex, and intertwined problems with many possible answers.
When I run, I think about everything: physics, family problems, plans for the weekend. I haven't made any big discoveries on a run, but it does give me time to think through problems. Some solutions are obvious, but they are only obvious when you are relaxed enough to find them.
Beware of people preaching simple solutions to complex problems. If the answer was easy someone more intelligent would have thought of it a long time ago - complex problems invariably require complex and difficult solutions.
The establishment of religious freedom was no less momentous an achievement than the clearing of the great forest or the winning of independence, for the twin doctrines of separation of church and state and liberty of individual conscience are the marrow of our democracy, if not indeed America's most magnificent contribution to the freeing of Western man.
It is, indeed, a fact that, in the midst of society and sociability every evil inclination has to place itself under such great restraint, don so many masks, lay itself so often on the procrustean bed of virtue, that one could well speak of a martyrdom of the evil man. In solitude all this falls away. He who is evil is at his most evil in solitude: which is where he is at his best - and thus to the eye of him who sees everywhere only a spectacle also at his most beautiful.
Civics is in fact politics, and politics is how things work not only in the political realm but in every other realm. It may be this simple mechanical glitch that unites everything. This is my philosophy.
...an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.
Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
Social bonds have given way under the collapse of social protections and the attack on the welfare state. Moreover, all solutions to socially produced problems are now relegated to the mantra of individual solutions.
Without great solitude no serious work is possible.
It constantly remains a source of disappointment to me that my drawings are not yet what I want them to be. The difficulties are indeed numerous and great, and cannot be overcome at once. To make progress is a kind of miner’s work; it doesn’t advance as quickly as one would like, and as others also expect, but as one stands before such a task, the basic necessities are patience and faithfulness. In fact, I do not think much about the difficulties, because if one thought of them too much one would get stunned or disturbed.
What my experience has taught me is that regardless of how complicated the problems might appear, it is possible to work through them and find solutions that are mutually satisfactory to every stakeholder in the problem... most of our problems on this earth are created by us and therefore we have the capacity and the obligation to unmake them.
I think with regards to solutions, there are solutions, and I think there is only one. we have said repeatedly to the government of the United States that we do not want anything but to forget us, that they do not consider us even for good or evil.
It's a different thing to write a love story now than in the time of Jane Austen, Eliot, or Tolstoy. One of the problems is that once divorce is possible, once break-ups are possible, it can all become a little less momentous.
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