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Complexity Quotes

Browse 1197 quotes about Complexity.

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Complexity Quotes

“What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.”

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Author:Annie Dillard
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“[Man] is the only animal who lives outside of himself, whose drive is in external things—property, houses, money, concepts of power. He lives in his cities and his factories, in his business and job and art. But having projected himself into these external complexities, he is them. His house, his automobile are a part of him and a large part of him. This is beautifully demonstrated by a thing doctors know—that when a man loses his possessions a very common result is sexual impotence.”

KnowsMenArtJobsHouseLosesAnimalResultsCommonCitiesConceptsDoctorsPropertyPossessionComplexityFactoriesAutomobileImpotence
Book:The Log from the Sea of Cortez
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“In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation that is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over other claims.”

RealityDarknessJourneyDangerClaimsHungerNovelistsComplexityRevelationsParadoxAmbiguityPrecedenceOverlooking
Author:James A. Baldwin
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“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

IfsKnowsMenProblemTruthScienceLyingAcceptingTaughtTruth IsArgumentIncludingSimplicityObviousResistanceConclusionEaseComplexityThreadSkepticismFabricColleaguesSimplestExplainingDelightedWovenPhilosophy Of ScienceScientific TruthFalsityQuestioning BeliefsAccepting The TruthI Know The Truth
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“We can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reacher, because we enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles--a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are.”

IfsWellsBookDreamEnjoyInterestImagineWrittenReaderLibraryVarietyComplexityFoibles
Book:The Library at Night
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“As we grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and unreasonableness of human beings; this indeed is the only excuse that offers for the middle-aged or elderly writer whose thoughts should more properly be turned to graver matters, occupying himself with the trivial concerns of imaginary people.”

PeopleIfsMenShouldHumansRealMatterGrowsHuman BeingsFictionStudyMiddleMankindFiguresOffersCreaturesConsciousConcernExcuseSignificantReal LifeComplexitySensibleImaginaryIrrationalElderlyMiddle AgedIncoherenceOccupy Yourself
Author:W. Somerset Maugham
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“There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet”

LooksOne ThingTruth IsPatternsSurfaceTinyComplexityThreadMultipleUnseenCarpetKnotsWeavers
Book:Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations
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“The middle path makes me wary. . . . But in the middle of my life, I am coming to see the middle path as a walk with wisdom where conversations of complexity can be found, that the middle path is the path of movement. . . . In the right and left worlds, the stories are largely set. . . . We become missionaries for a position . . . practitioners of the missionary position. Variety is lost. Diversity is lost. Creativity is lost in our inability to make love with the world.”

WorldStoriesFoundLostLeftWalksCreativityPathMiddleMovementPositionConversationDiversityCompromiseVarietyComplexityMissionaryMaking LoveInabilityMiddle Path
Author:Terry Tempest Williams
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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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“The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely wise in our replies.”

IfsWayAbleDifficultSimpleClearWiseAdultsPhilosopherComplexityDistinctionGreat Philosophers
Book:How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
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“If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.”

IfsWorldImportantScienceAttitudeBeautyGreaterImaginePerspectiveHorrorApproachGloryCuriositySizeHumbleSurfaceComplexitySchemesShrinksMundanePreoccupation
Author:Daniel Dennett
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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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“The Winter Woman is as wild as a blizzard, as fresh as new snow. While some see her as cold, she has a fiery heart under that ice-queen exterior. She likes the stark simplicity of Japanese art and the daring complexity of Russian literature. She prefers sharp to flowing lines, brooding to pouting, and rock and roll to country and western. Her drink is vodka, her car is German, her analgesic is Advil. The Winter Woman likes her men weak and her coffee strong. She is prone to anemia, hysteria, and suicide.”

MenHeartArtCountryLiteratureStrongLinesRocksCarColdDrinkWeakSuicideWesternWinterSimplicityCoffeeLikesSnowIceQueensComplexityDaringRock And RollStarksFieryHysteriaExteriorBroodingVodkaRussian LiteratureBlizzardPoutingIce QueenAnemiaJapanese Art
Author:Christopher Moore
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“to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap”

KnowsBelieveMeanLightBehindsMysteryDesignEverydayAcknowledgeComplexityMechanismGesturesReflexesUnlearnSwitchingSwitching Off
Book:The Architecture of Happiness
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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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“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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“A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic - not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so. Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels - the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.”

WayHeartMeanEnoughCharacterShowsProblemPainLyingIndividualVoiceSinSpaceExistenceNovelDemocracySeeingEmpathyBlindDemocraticComplexityTehranGreat Novels
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
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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 point is... to live one's life in the full complexity of what one is, which is something much darker, more contradictory, more of a maelstrom of impulses and passions, of cruelty, ecstacy, and madness, than is apparent to the civilized being who glides on the surface and fits smoothly into the world.”

WorldPassionFitMadnessSurfaceCrueltyImpulseComplexityCivilizedContradictoryMaelstrom
Book:Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002-2008
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“Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex.”

ThinkingLifeLooksFactsLife IsCausesEasyAnswersMysteryGloryConsequenceAppreciateComplexesChaosSimplicityAppreciationComplexityUrgesAbandonParadoxFormulasInherentMultitudesSimplifyDismayedEasy Answers
Book:Further Along the Road Less Traveled: The Unending Journey Towards Spiritual Growth
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“Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love...it had all the shadings and complexities of mature adult love and maybe more, because there were not yet words for it, and because it was not yet fixed to comparisons or chronologies or the ways by which adults measure such things...I just loved her. Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones -- that kind of love.”

WayYearsKindBodyWantedAdultsBonesNineFixedComplexityComparisonMatureNine YearsKinds Of LoveChronology
Author:Tim O'Brien
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“Calvin: The more you know, the harder it is to take decisive action. Once you are informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of gray. You realize nothing is as clear as it first appears. Ultimately, knowledge is paralyzing. Being a man of action, I cannot afford to take that risk. Hobbes: You're ignorant, but at least you act on it.”

KnowsMenFirstsActionRealizingClearSeeingRiskHarderIgnorantComplexityGrayShadeHobbesShades Of GrayDecisive Action
Author:Bill Watterson
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“The Constitution. . . illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law--all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity.”

PeopleDoeMadeEnoughLawInterestPoorSupportMiddleConstitutionPropertyUnityIncomeIndianComplexityOwnersWealthyBroadsFarmersElitesMinimumMechanicMaximumProsperousCoercionFanfare
Book:A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
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“In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes.”

StillsMightCausesImagineEvolutionLuckAppealsExplanationAbstractComplexityImagine ThatMultipleMetaphysicalSpeculationBrutesSerendipityTemptingInvokeMutationSimultaneous
Author:Michael Behe
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