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Complexity Quotes

Browse 1197 quotes about Complexity.

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Complexity Quotes

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions. [...] It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. [...] You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.”

HardAbleOrderChallengesSimpleConsciousnessProductsHard WorkEssentialsSolutionsEssenceUltimateDepthSimplicityCome UpAbsenceComplexityElegantDiggingMinimalismClutterSophisticationReally DeepElegant Solutions
Author:Steve Jobs
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“The point, which can hardly be repeated too often, is that differentiation is not separation. The head and the feet are different, but not separate, and though man is not connected to the universe by exactly the same physical relation as branch to tree or feet to head, he is nonetheless connected - and by physical relations of fascinating complexity.”

MenDifferentMotivationalUniverseTreeFeetRelationConnectedSeparationComplexityBranchesFascinatingOften IsDifferentiation
Book:The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
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“If in the human economy, a squash in the field is worth more than a bushel of soil, that does not mean that food is more valuable than soil; it means simply that we do not know how to value the soil. In its complexity and its potential longevity, the soil exceeds our comprehension; we do not know how to place a just market value on it, and we will never learn how. Its value is inestimable; we must value it, beyond whatever price we put on it, by respecting it.”

IfsKnowsHumansMeanDoeValuesKnow HowEconomyLandFieldsValuableComplexitySoilLongevityExceedComprehensionSquash
Author:Wendell Berry
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“The consumer wants food to be as cheap as possible. The producer wants it to be as expensive as possible. Both want it to involve as little labor as possible. And so the standards of cheapness and convenience, which are irresistibly simplifying and therefore inevitably exploitive, have been substituted for the standard of health (of both people and land), which would enforce consideration of essential complexities.”

PeopleWantLittlesHas BeensLandEssentialsStandardsLaborProducersConsumersComplexityExpensiveConsiderationConvenienceCheapness
Author:Wendell Berry
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“The ecology of the valley was complex beyond our understanding, and it began to die as we went on manipulating it in ever more frantic ways. As it went dead and empty of the old life it became a place where no one wanted to live. In our right minds we want to seek out places that reek of complexity. Our drive to industrialize soured and undercut the intimacies that drew most people to country life in the first place.”

PeopleWayWantMindFirstsCountryWantedDiesUnderstandingLandEmptyComplexesIntimacyComplexityValleysEcologyFranticCountry LifeOld LifeUndercut
Author:William Kittredge
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“I have tried (I am not sure how successfully) to write plain tales. I dare not say they are simple; there is not a simple page, a simple word, on earth -\-\ for all pages, all words, predicate the universe, whose most notorious attribute is its complexity.”

WritingEarthUniverseSimplePagesDareTalesNot SureComplexityAttributesNotoriousSimple Words
Book:Brodie's Report: Including the Prose Fiction from In Praise of Darkness
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“It is essential to grasp the incontestable truth that a Marxist must take cognisance of real life, of the true facts of reality, and not cling to a theory of yesterday, which, like all theories, at best only outlines the main and the general, only comes near to embracing life in all its complexity.”

RealFactsRealityTheoryEssentialsYesterdayReal LifeComplexityOutlinesMarxistTrue Fact
Book:Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution
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“One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, .. The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth. It is time for the president and the Congress to follow that common sense for the good of the country.”

PeopleImportantCountryCharacterFallPresidentAbilityCommonVirtueFineJudgmentApproachArgumentCongressCommon SenseComplexityDistinctionDecencyAmerican Character
Author:Dick Gephardt
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“Most of the complexity of the stories has developed as the stories came along (and may be a product of the principle that "nothing is what it seems"). I did start with some essential ambiguousness in the aliens' motivation and the questions this raises in human minds, which I consider to have been disregarded in Contact (novel and film). That, in part, may be what has delayed the writing of the fifth and sixth novelettes in the series.”

WritingMindHumansMayHas BeensStoriesSeemsFilmMotivationPrinciplesNovelProductsEssentialsRaisesSeriesContactAliensComplexityHuman MindFifthAmbiguityDelayedDisregarded
Author:James Gunn
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“If there is one word that makes creative people different from others, it is the word complexity. Instead of being an individual, they are a multitude. Like the color white that includes all colors, they tend to bring together the entire range of human possibilities within themselves. Creativity allows for paradox, light, shadow, inconsistency, even chaos -and creative people experience both extremes with equal intensity.”

PeopleIfsHumansDifferentLightTogetherIndividualWhiteCreativityCreativePossibilityColorEqualShadowChaosExtremesRangeComplexityParadoxIntensityMultitudesOne WordCreative PeopleInconsistencyColor White
Author:Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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“The truly awesome intellectuals in our history have not merely made discoveries; they have woven variegated, but firm, tapestries of comprehensive coverage. The tapestries have various fates: Most burn or unravel in the footsteps of time and the fires of later discovery. But their glory lies in their integrity as unified structures of great complexity and broad implication.”

MadeLyingFireFateIntegrityGloryDiscoveryStructureVariousFirmComplexityBroadsComprehensiveImplicationsFootstepsCoverageWovenUnifiedTapestry
Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history
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“Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.”

WellsMightFormNaturalEnvironmentGreaterBehaviorFunctionSimplicityLocalsComplexityYieldSelectionAdaptationNatural SelectionHabitatNatural Habitats
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
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“If you search the scientific literature on evolution, and if you focus your search on the question of how molecular machines - the basis of life - developed, you find an eerie and complete silence. The complexity of life's foundation has paralyzed science's attempt to account for it; molecular machines raise an as-yet-impenetrable barrier to Darwinism's universal reach.”

IfsLiteratureSilenceFocusEvolutionMachinesUniversalAccountsBasesRaisesFoundationComplexityBarriersDarwinismParalyzedEerie
Author:Michael Behe
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“In products of the human mind, simplicity marks the end of a process of refining, while complexity marks a primitive stage. Michelangelo 's definition of art as the purgation of superfluities suggests that the creative effort consists largely in the elimination of that which complicates and confuses a pattern.”

MindHumansArtEndsProcessEffortCreativeStageProductsMarkSimplicityPatternsDefinitionsComplexityHuman MindPrimitiveEliminationRefining
Author:Eric Hoffer
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“There is probably no one, however rigid his virtue, who is not liable to find himself, by the complexity of circumstances, living at close quarters with the very vice which he himself has been most outspoken in condemning -- without altogether recognizing it beneath the disguise of ambiguous behavior which it assumes in his presence.”

Has BeensVirtueCircumstancesBehaviorAssumingVicesComplexityQuartersDisguiseRecognizingLiableAmbiguousCondemningOutspoken
Book:In Search of Lost Time: Swann's way
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“It happens from time to time in every complex and active society, that certain persons feel the complexity and insistence as a tangle, and seek freedom in retirement, as Thoreau sought at Walden Pond. They do not, however, in this manner escape from the social institutions of their time, nor do they really mean to do so; what they gain, if they are successful, is a saner relation to them.”

IfsFeelsMeanPersonsHappensCertainSocialSuccessfulGainsRelationInstitutionsComplexesActiveComplexityRetirementReally MeanPondsInsistenceSocial InstitutionsWalden Pond
Book:Human Nature and the Social Order
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“Art arises in those strange complexities of action that are called human beings. It is a kind of human behavior. As such it is not magic, except as human beings are magical. Nor is it concerned in absolutes, eternities, "forms," beyond those that may reside in the context of the human being and be subject to his vicissitudes. Art is not an inner state of consciousness, whatever that may mean. Neither is it essentially a supreme form of communication. Art is human behavior, and its values are contained in human behavior.”

HumansKindMayMeanArtStatesActionFormValuesHuman BeingsConsciousnessMagicSubjectsStrangeCommunicationBehaviorArt IsConcernedEternityAbsolutesSupremeAriseComplexityHuman BehaviorStates Of ConsciousnessVicissitudes
Author:Baker Brownell
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“The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible.”

WorldIdeasSelfLightUniversePleasurePathCapableDiscoveryAll ThingsOrganizationDifficultyChaosSimplicityDeeperPhysicsSelf RealizationRealizationMannersSubstanceComplexityInterpretationChemistryPeculiarAtomsMomentaryDiscordOld Ideas
Author:Aleister Crowley
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“The order and harmony of the Western world, its most famous achievement, and a laboratory in which structures of a complexity as yet unknown are being fashioned, demand the elimination of a prodigious mass of noxious by-products which now contaminate the globe. The first thing we see as we travel round the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.”

WorldFirstsFacesOrderMankindProductsDemandAchievementMassHarmonyStructureWesternRoundsComplexityThrownGlobesLaboratoryEliminationWestern WorldFilthProdigious
Book:Tristes Tropiques
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“Political society wants things simple. Political scientists know them to be complex... One could argue that, in part, the leftist impulse is so conspicuous among the educated and well-to-do precisely because they are exposed to more information, and are accordingly forced to choose between living with the strains of complexity, or lapsing into simplism.”

KnowsWantWellsPoliticalSimpleInformationScientistComplexesArguingEducatedImpulseComplexityExposedStrainLeftists
Book:Coping: On the Practice of Government
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“Anthropology has reached that point of development where the careful investigation of facts shakes our firm belief in the far-reaching theories that have been built up. The complexity of each phenomenon dawns on our minds, and makes us desirous of proceeding more cautiously. Heretofore we have seen the features common to all human thought”

MindHumansHas BeensFactsBeliefCommonTheoryDevelopmentBuiltCarefulFirmDawnFeaturesComplexityShakesReachingPhenomenonInvestigationAnthropologyProceedingHuman ThoughtFirm Beliefs
Book:A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911
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“Elizabeth Turnage is a woman of grit and grace who lives into the stories of those who join her in this odd journey of seeking God. She honors the complexity of life without ever losing sight of the simple glory of the cross. Her grasp of the mundane and miraculous and their interplay gives a depth and honesty to her story that tugs at the heart and gives us hope our story can matter. Her book will be a clarion call to bring our broken, holy, troubled, and glorious life to the author of all stories: Jesus.”

GivingHeartBookMatterStoriesJesusSimpleGraceJourneyHonestyBrokenHonorHolyLosingGloryCrossesSightDepthSeekingOddComplexityGloriousMiraculousMundaneGritSeeking GodGlorious Life
Author:Dan B. Allender
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