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Complexes Quotes

“Life is complex. Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another...The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness.”

SelfHelpingLife IsEasyAnswersPathJourneySelf HelpComplexesWildernessFormulasLitManualsLife JourneyRight RoadEasy AnswersWrong RoadRoad Sign
Author:M. Scott Peck
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“I was taught that candles are like house cats - domesticated versions of something wild and dangerous. There's no way to know how much of that killer instinct lurks in the darkness. I used to think the house-burning paranoia was the result of some upper-middle-class fear regarding the potential destruction of a half-million-dollar Westchester house the size of a matchbox. But then I realized the fear stemmed from something far less complex: we're not used to fire. Candles are a staple of the Judaic existence and, like many suburban residents before us, we're pretty bad Jews.”

ThinkingKnowsWayUsedHouseResultsExistenceHalfClassMillionsDarknessKnow HowFireMiddleDangerousTaughtCatDestructionDollarsInstinctComplexesSizeJewI RealizedVersionsBurningMiddle ClassCandleKillersMillion DollarsParanoiaResidentsStaplesUpper Middle ClassKiller InstinctMatchboxes
Book:I Was Told There'd Be Cake
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“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”

ShouldBelieveHas BeensDifferentLightSeemsEyeScienceImaginationNaturalPerfectFocusMinesTheoryAmountDegreesHighestDifficultyDistanceSpeciesComplexesAbsurdSelectionCould Have BeenNatural SelectionCorrectionsAdmittingSubversiveDarwinismMiningAdjustingAberrationOrigin Of SpeciesHuman EyesThese EyesCreationistNatural Forms
Author:Charles Darwin
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“It was a good hald minute before I looked over at Todd. his eyes were slightly foggy, like he was waking up- reluctantly- from a lascivious dream. "I didn't know they still made them like that," he said.... "Cool, tough, retro-manly. The kind who only cries if someone just ran over their dog. The big chested guy we can indulge our pathetic Daddy complexes with.”

IfsKnowsKindMadeSaidStillsDreamBigsEyeGuyMinutesDogCryToughWake UpComplexesRanHis EyesWakingDaddyIndulgePatheticManlyRetro
Author:Lisa Kleypas
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“The kiss was innocent--innocent enough--but it was also full of something not unlike what Virginia wants from London, from life; it was full of a love complex and ravenous, ancient, neither this nor that. It will serve as this afternoon's manifestation of the central mystery itself, the elusive brightness that shines from the edges of certain dreams; the brightness which, when we awaken, is already fading from our minds, and which we rise in the hope of finding, perhaps today, this new day in which anything might happen, anything at all.”

WantMindEnoughDreamMightHappensTodayCertainMysteryKissingFindingsShiningComplexesAncientEdgesLondonInnocentManifestationAfternoonNew DayVirginiaElusiveBrightnessFading
Author:Michael Cunningham
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“...wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannot bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behavior. For that there must be words, but words without reason... Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, encrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.”

ReasonHomeFallCoursesWaterRocksBehaviorComplexesHolesHardestDistinctionConditioningLiquidCrudeScarletDrop Of WaterWholesaleGranite
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“Welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy, he thought. For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistable urge to commit murder, and an inferiority complex. Yippee.”

WorldLoveWonderfulMurderComplexesCommitWelcomeJealousyUrgesJealousInferiorityHeadacheAdmissionSplittingInferiority ComplexWonderful WorldZsadistYou Jealous
Book:Dark Lover: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood
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“You do not become a ''dissident'' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.”

WellsEndsResponsibilityEnemyCareersPositionCircumstancesOne DayConflictStructureComplexesCastsThrownPatriotismUnusualDissentSense Of ResponsibilityDissidentsBranded
Author:Vaclav Havel
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“This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got.”

WorldHumansDoeMatterArtistHuman BeingsPositionFindingsComplexesGenreComplexityVillainOriginalityConsistentlyFacetsMultiplicityOrigin Of LifeComplexity Of Human
Author:Toni Morrison
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“Sometimes, though, I feel that pushing books is a whole lot like pushing medicine. Think of books as pills. I have pills that cure ignorance and pills that cure boredom. I have pills to elevate moods and pills to open people's eyes to the awful truth: uppers and downers as they were. I sell pills to help people find themselves and pills to help them lose themselves when they require escape from the pressures and anxieties of life in a complex society.”

PeopleThinkingFeelsBookSometimesWholeHelpingEyeLosesIgnoranceAnxietyPressureSellsMedicineComplexesMoodCuresAwfulBoredomPushingPillsDowners
Book:Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
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“He believed that he must, that he could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the easy tranquil things of life. He had made mistakes, but he could overlook these. He had been a fool, but that could be forgiven. The time wasted--must be relinquished. What else could one do about it? Things were too complex, but they might be reduced to simplicity again. Recovery was possible.”

MadeMightEasyMistakeFoolGood ThingsComplexesSimplicityRecoveryForgivenMade A MistakeTranquilWasted TimeHappy Things
Author:Saul Bellow
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“I know California isn't a real destination. You can't get there from New Jersey, not simply by following a line drawn on a map. The process of arrival is more subtle and complex. It involves acts of contrition. You must appease the gods. You must find novel forms of penance. You must tattoo your children and look at the wonder. It's about conjuring and awakening and intuitions you wish you never had.”

KnowsLooksChildrenRealFormWishProcessLinesWonderNovelComplexesFollowingIntuitionAwakeningCaliforniaYour ChildrenSubtleMapsDestinationTattooJerseyWish YouArrivalsNew JerseyPenanceAppeaseConjuringContrition
Author:Kate Braverman
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“He resented such questions as people do who have thought a great deal about them. The superficial and slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization. The vanity (if not outrage) of trying to cage this dance of atoms in a single definition may give the weariness of age with the cry of youth for answers the appearance of boredom.”

PeopleIfsGivingTryingMayEyeAgeWealthAnswersDealsCryYouthReadyPerceptionComplexesDefinitionsAppearanceVanityBoredomAcquireContradictionAtomsDreadBalancedSuperficialCagesCouchesOutrageResentWearinessBlandGeneralization
Author:Peter De Vries
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“Girls are simply wonderful. Just to stand on a corner and watch them going past is delightful. They don't walk. At least not what we do when we walk. I don't know how to describe it, but it's much more complex and utterly delightful. They don't move just their feet; everything moves and in different directions . . . and all of it graceful.”

KnowsDifferentPastMovingGirlWalksWatchesKnow HowWonderfulFeetComplexesCornersDelightfulDifferent Directions
Book:Starship Troopers
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“He always reminded us that every atom in our bodies was once part of a distant star that had exploded. He talked about how evolution moves from simplicity toward complexity, and how human intelligence is the highest known expression of evolution. I remember him telling me that a frog's brain is much more complex than a star. He saw human consciousness as the first neuron of the universe coming to life and awareness. A spark in the darkness, waiting to spread to fire.”

FirstsHumansBodyRememberMovingUniverseStarsWaitingBrainConsciousnessKnownDarknessFireSawsAwarenessExpressionEvolutionHighestComplexesSimplicitySpreadComplexitySparksAtomsFrogsHuman ConsciousnessNeuronsHuman Intelligence
Book:The Footprints of God
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“I began dividing life in absolutes... Things and people were either perfectly bad, or perfectly good, and when life didn't obey this black-and-white rule, when things or people were complex or contradictory, I pretended otherwise. I turned every defeat into a disaster, every success into an epic triumph, and separated all people into heroes or villains. Unable to bear ambiguity, I built a barricade of delusions against it.”

PeopleBlackWhiteBearsHeroBuiltAbsolutesComplexesDefeatDisasterTriumphDelusionVillainBlack And WhiteEpicContradictoryAmbiguityDividingPerfectly GoodBarricades
Author:J. R. Moehringer
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“But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost--they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching.”

BodyNextAnimalGenerationsTeachingHigherCostBehaviorComplexesDeterminedDnaFlexibilityAdaptationNext GenerationDependencyAdaptive
Book:The Lost World
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“I don't expect Christians to see God as a metaphor, but that's what he is. Perhaps it might be clearer to call him a character in fiction, and a very interesting one too: one of the greatest and most complex villains of all - savage, petty, boastful and jealous, and yet capable of moments of tenderness and extremes of arbitrary affection - for David, for example. But he's not real, any more than Hamlet or Mr Pickwick are real. They are real in the context of their stories, but you won't find them in the phone book.”

BookRealMomentsCharacterStoriesMightChristianInterestingFictionExampleCapableComplexesMetaphorPhonesAffectionExtremesJealousVillainTendernessSavagesPettyArbitraryVery Interesting
Author:Philip Pullman
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“All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts wending their ways in water. If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring's center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish's tail.”

IfsWorldWayWholeWaterBloodSixHundredRedGreenComplexesRingsThirtyRemoveIronAtomsTailsCarbonOxygenMoleculesDotsHydrogenStreamingGoldfishNitrogenMagnesiumComplex Relationships
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“People have a hard time accepting free-market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer--a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer--a government. In fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer.”

PeopleNeedsLooksSelfHardReasonFactsGovernmentCausesNaturalSimpleAcceptingPrinciplesEconomyTheoryEvolutionEconomicsOrganizationIntelligentComplexesAriseDesignerComplexityHard TimesInclinationFree MarketEmergenceTop DownComplex Systems
Author:Michael Shermer
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“Independence is a complex word in a foreign tongue. To resist occupation, whether you're a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democrac and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain.”

LooksMeanChildrenLanguageNationsLinesEnemyClothesRainIndependenceComplexesDivorceTongueHungryLiberationOccupationConquestSquat
Book:The Poisonwood Bible
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“You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex,' said Mrs. Smiling. It is not that at all, and well you know it. On the whole, I dislike my fellow beings; I find them so difficult to understand. But I have a tidy mind and untidy lives irritate me. Also, they are uncivilized.”

KnowsMindWellsSaidWholeDifficultFellowsComplexesDislikeTidyNightingalesFlorenceUncivilizedCold Comfort FarmFlorence Nightingale
Book:Cold comfort farm
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“I feel with some passion that what we truly are is private, and almost infinitely complex, and ambiguous, and both external and internal, and double- or triple- or multiply natured, and largely mysterious even to ourselves; and furthermore that what we are is only part of us, because identity, unlike "identity", must include what we do. And I think that to find oneself and every aspect of this complexity reduced in the public mind to one property that apparently subsumes all the rest ("gay", "black", "Muslim", whatever) is to be the victim of a piece of extraordinary intellectual vulgarity.”

ThinkingFeelsMindPassionBlackPiecesIdentityGayIntellectualAspectVictimPropertyComplexesExtraordinaryOneselfMysteriousComplexityInternalsAmbiguousVulgarity
Author:Philip Pullman
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“God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, ie., everybody, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”

WayDoePlayMightMovingUniverseGamesDarkRoomsPlayerPerspectiveInvolvedInfiniteComplexesVersionsCardsMysteriousStakesBlankObscureDealerDiscworldDiceIneffableOmenDark RoomGood OmensDevising
Author:Terry Pratchett
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“It is tempting when looking at the life of anyone who has committed suicide to read into the decision to die a vastly complex web of reasons; and, of course, such complexity is warranted. No one illness or event causes suicide; and certainly no one knows all, or perhaps even most, of the motivations behind the killing of the self. But psychopathology is almost always there, and its deadliness is fierce. Love, success, and friendship are not always enough to counter the pain and destructiveness of severe mental illness”

KnowsSelfReasonEnoughPainMotivationDiesCoursesCausesDecisionBehindsEventsSuicideComplexesKillingIllnessCommittedMental IllnessComplexityFierceSevereTemptingPsychopathologyDestructiveness
Author:Kay Redfield Jamison
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“The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.”

MindMadeTwoIdeasRealTogetherThreeSimpleViewsExistenceThirdsRelationComplexesSettingSettingsAbstractionCompoundsAccompanySeparatingCombiningUnitingSimple Ideas
Author:John Locke
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“I love you, he thought, looking at Win. I love every part of you, every thought and word...the entire complex, fascinating bundle of all the things you are. I want you with ten different kinds of need at once. I love all the seasons of you, the way you are now, the thought of how much more beautiful you'll be in the decades to come. I love you for being the answer to every question my heart could ask.”

WayWantNeedsHeartKindDifferentBeautifulAsksWinningAnswersLove YouMy HeartTenSeasonsComplexesDecadesFascinatingDifferent KindsI Want YouBundlesBeautiful YouThoughts And Words
Book:Seduce Me at Sunrise
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“The aspirations of democracy are based on the notion of an informed citizenry, capable of making wise decisions. The choices we are asked to make become increasingly complex. They require the longer-term thinking and greater tolerance for ambiguity that science fosters. The new economy is predicated on a continuous pipeline of scientific and technological innovation. It can not exist without workers and consumers who are mathematically and scientifically literate.”

ThinkingChoicesTermDecisionEconomyDemocracyGreaterWiseCapableInnovationComplexesWorkersNotionToleranceConsumersAspirationTechnologicalCan NotAmbiguityCitizenryPipelineWise DecisionInformed Citizenry
Author:Ann Druyan
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