Fernando Pessoa Quotes

There is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had.

There are many people who want simple solutions, but there are none ... nor will there be.

The great problem now is that we don’t know what to do.

We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future. We shall never be able to say, "Ha! My perception, my accounting for that series, will indeed cover its next and future components," or "Next time I meet with these phenomena, I shall be able to predict their total course."

The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.

Often, problems are knots with many strands, and looking at those strands can make a problem seem different.

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown.

We have the same problem as everyone else: It's very hard to predict the future.

Unfortunately, simplistic framing of problems leads to simplistic answers.

Throughout history, one of the biggest problems is that the correct course of action is not always obvious, and the obvious course of action is not always correct.

In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final solutions.

The task is not so much to solve problems as to propose questions.

We must not expect simple answers to far-reaching questions. However far our gaze penetrates, there are always heights beyond which block our vision.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem, but the perpetual human predicament is that the answer soon poses its own problems.

The deduction of effect from cause is often blocked by some insuperable extrinsic obstacle: the true causes may be quite unknown. Nowhere in life is this so common as in war, where the facts are seldom fully known and the underlying motives even less so.

People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.

There are no silver bullets.

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.

The definition of the problem, rather than its solution, will be the scarce resource in the future.

A favorite means of escaping the solution to any problem is to declare it too complex for solution. This absolves us from attempting solution. ... Any problem is too complex to solve when we do not wish to accept the conditions of solution. Solution is possible where acceptance is ready.

Our most important problems cannot be solved; they must be outgrown.

We have been sitting here all night bullshitting and we still don’t know what to do.

Life is a mystery,but man wants to reduce it to a problem!

Stupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions. We are a thread, and we want to know the whole cloth.