The experience of learning how to get straight to the core of a problem proved to be of immense value later when I had a long succession of responsibilities in large, complex government departments.
When I was a boy I used to do what my father wanted. Now I have to do what my boy wants. My problem is: When am I going to do what I want?
I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about.
This might be the first generation where kids are dying at a younger age than their parents and it's related primarily to the obesity problem.
My problem with the word 'clean' is that it has become too complicated. It has become too loaded. When I first read the term, it meant natural, unprocessed. Now it doesn't mean that at all. It means diet. It means fad.
I have no problem with nudity. I can look at myself. I like walking around nude. It doesn't bother me. I see all the people walking around nude; it doesn't bother me.
Some people suggest that the problem is the separation of powers. If you had a parliamentary system, the struggle for power would not result in such complex peace treaties that empower so many different people to pursue so many contradictory aims.
Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.
I would have been completely brainwashed by this lopsided and racist view of the world if it weren't for my father. He was a deep thinker and an irrepressible problem solver. He was a Black Socrates, asking why and then spoiling ready-made replies.
Indians have a big problem with alcohol and drugs. I grew up with an admiration for their culture and was sensitive to their problems.
When I see the hatred exacted at Mr. Obama - you know, he lowered your taxes, killed your number one bad guy and got your guys out of Iraq - I don't understand why he seems to inflame people so much. You know, unless, unless there's a race problem.
I'm sure Sting's a lovely guy. It's just that nobody wants to be seen as that holier-than-thou thing. That over-earnestness is a bit of a problem with people in bands and celebrities or whatever.
Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.
When I worked as a prosecutor in Richmond, Virginia in the 1990s, that city, like so much of America, was experiencing horrific levels of violent crime. But to describe it that way obscures an important truth: for the most part, white people weren't dying; black people were dying. Most white people could drive around the problem.
Even if you build the perfect reactor, you're still saddled with a people problem and an equipment problem.
Every woman is just a different kind of problem.
Practically every environmental problem we have can be traced to our addiction to fossil fuels, primarily oil.
What interests me is seeing a problem and doing something about it, not all of the stuff around it.
Our problem, from the point of view of psychology and from the point of view of genetic epistemology, is to explain how the transition is made from a lower level of knowledge to a level that is judged to be higher.
There's the great line: the definition of a liberal is someone who's afraid to take their own side in a fight. And that's my problem with my fellow liberals.
I hope that seeing the excitement of solving this problem will make young mathematicians realize that there are lots and lots of other problems in mathematics which are going to be just as challenging in the future.
The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
We took over with 'Leverage' three warehouses, and now four with 'The Librarians,' and turned them into proper sound stages with sound doors and all the lights. We now have control of four real, proper-sized sound stages. The problem is they're dark and empty half of the year because there aren't enough productions coming into Oregon.
Look, I'm very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money. And the problem that we've gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous. And my view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here.
It is this research into pure painting that is the problem at the present moment. I do not know any painters in Paris who are really searching for this ideal world.
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song. What do I write about? I never know.
Money has always been a particular problem for revolutionaries and anti-capitalists. What will money look like 'after the revolution'? How will it function? Will it exist at all? It's hard to answer the question if you don't know what money actually is. Proposing to eliminate it entirely seems utopian and naive.
The problem with the designated driver programme, it's not a desirable job. But if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At then end of the night drop them off at the wrong house.
A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.
The role of money in politics is a major problem and particularly the role of unchecked anonymous money.
A while ago I did a story comparing the change in employment rates in recessions in the U.S. and in Europe, and what I found was that America fired a lot of people and rehired a lot of people faster than Europe. That difference is disappearing, and that is a problem.
And like I say, I think we've got other cases other than Iraq. I do not think the problem of global proliferation of weapons technology of mass destruction is going to go away, and that's why I think it is an urgent issue.
I think I have some very meaningful relationships with people; we all do. At the same time, I recognize that everyone is following their own heart; there's been people who have left my life, and I don't have a problem with that. This is a transitory world; we're all spirits just looking for love and finding it and holding on.
It's almost impossible to have security at the expense of insecurity of others. It's almost impossible to have prosperity when there is a huge problem of poverty and backwardness all over the world.
The problem with cap-and-trade and programs such as carbon capture and storage is that they all assume that business as usual can continue. The financial meltdown and peak oil has pretty much demonstrated that business as usual's not going to work.
Occasionally, chewing over some random letter writer's dilemma, I'll find myself imagining scenarios where the problem could be sidestepped by an innocent fib or series of evasive manoeuvres. Then, I slap myself on the wrist.
