Complex Issues Quotes

Children are the boldest philosophers. They enter life naked, not covered by the smallest fig leaf of dogma, absolutes, creeds. This is why every question they ask is so absurdly naïve and so frighteningly complex.

When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

The attempt to treat politics as a branch of the profession of law [has] the disadvantage of refining issues to a point which no large society could comprehend.

About specific social issues, there is a great deal to say that departs very far from truism and is, accordingly, significant and controversial.

The issues that cross a president's desk are never easy. The easy questions don't even get to the president.

I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice .... These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I supposed it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right. The subject is difficult, and good men do not agree.

There is no problem so complicated that you can't find a very simple answer to it if you look at it right.

It is important to have a President who not only understands, but enjoys complexity

What we do as a society is seek simple answers.

Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer.

The blanket assertion that corporations are people obfuscates the complex issues at play in the changing business world. Corporation are institutions. People are people.

One should never, ever remain silent for fear of complexity,

Old men declare war because they have failed to solve complex political and economic problems.

We can’t have 535 Secretaries of State.

No doubt, the White House thinks the American people know Obama's story. But since the Inauguration, we've seen only the president's present: his perfect family, his Ivy League elegance, his effortless mastery of complex issues. We never see him sweat. And we forget that he ever had to struggle.

In George W. Bush's case, the public paid far too little attention to the role of religion in his thinking. Many voters failed to appreciate that while Bush's religious beliefs may be moderate Methodist ones, he was someone who relied on his faith immoderately, as an alternative to rational understanding of complex issues.

No easy problems ever come to the President. If they are easy to solve, somebody else has solved them.

If answers to our national problems were [readily] available we would not have to spend all our time talking about them.

The world is complicated. But does every problem require a complicated solution?

Puerto Rico is complicated. The people are complicated. The history is complicated. The story of the United States' relationship to Puerto Rico is complicated.

No scientist, engineer, writer, psychologist, artist, or physician - and certainly no scholar, and therefore no serious university faculty member - pursues his or her vocation by getting right answers from a set of prescribed alternatives that trivialize complexity and ambiguity.

The easy solution isn't the solution, it's the problem.

If immigration reform was easy, Congress would have dealt with it 15 years ago.