Quote #1: All of Humanity's Problems Stem from Man's Inability to Sit Quietly in a Room Alone

This is the first post of a new subsection on quotes which had a lot of impact on me and which, hopefully, might help you as well. I'm going to try to not only throw quotes on you but provide a context and other useful surrounding information that might be able to enforce even more the wisdom behind these pearls of human knowledge.

The first one is the extremely simple — some might say that the writer's job is to simply put the obvious in evidence... —:

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670.

• Already at least since the 1670's, humanity's inability to focus was patent, even when it comes to geniuses such as Blaise Pascal — he might not have had this problem actually, he might have been referring to his colleagues only, but I will assume he was human like us.
• The same message is found in many other artists' works. One funny example comes from the witty 20th century American writer Dorothy Parker: writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat.
• In a recent study, psychologists have found that our difficulties with respect to dealing with our own thoughts are so prevalent that we would rather receive physical pain than endure them. As I've learned during some of my loneliest moments of my one-year engineering exchange in Europe: you can change your country, friends and colleagues, but you will never escape from yourself and your own thoughts.
• Personally, what I take from this quote — and hope you do as well — is a very important reassurance from an accomplished master: if I do put the effort of applying my ass to the seat, I will eventually, at some point — fingers crossed —, be able to solve my problems.