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Complexity Quotes

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Complexity Quotes

“What had been released into the desert vacuum and starry oases of the galaxy was the inexorable logic of reproduction and natural selection. What followed was parasitism, predation, symbiosis, interdependency chaos, complexity, life.”

Natural Logic Chaos Desert Complexity Galaxy Selection Vacuums Natural Selection Reproduction Oasis Inexorable Symbiosis

Book:Vortex

Source: Vortex

“I believe C++ instills fear in programmers, fear that the interaction of some details causes unpredictable results. Its unmanageable complexity has spawned more fear-preventing tools than any other language, but the solution should have been to create and use a language that does not overload the whole goddamn human brain with irrelevant details.”

“Paradoxically, the simpler poetry is, the more difficult it becomes for a critic to discuss intelligently. Trained to explicate, the critic often loses the ability to evaluate literature outside the critical act. A work is good only in proportion to the richness and complexity of interpretations it provokes.”

Literature Difficult Loses Ability Critics Critical Complexity Proportion Poetry Is Interpretation Provoking Richness Evaluate

Book:Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture

Source: Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture

“You know, not every good book needs to be a movie, or a television series, or a video game. There's great work in those mediums, of course, but sometimes a book should remain a book. I still believe nothing tells a story with the richness and complexity of a good novel. When people say they think a book would make a good movie, they say this sometimes because, if it worked, they already saw all the images in the movie theatre that is in their brains. And sometimes that is the way it should stay.”

“If it be true that God and man are in one image or likeness (and the affirmation that they are so is not unplausible) then it is the duty of man to bring out into its full splendor that Divine Image which is latent, on one side, in the complexity of his own nature.”

Ifs Men Sides Divine Duty Being True Complexity Affirmation Splendor Latent

Book:The blazing star; with an appendix treating of the Jewish Kabbala, also a tract on the philosophy of H. Spencer, and one on New-England transcendentalism

Source: The blazing star; with an appendix treating of the Jewish Kabbala, also a tract on the philosophy of H. Spencer, and one on New-England transcendentalism

“Much of the image of the amazingness of America comes from the movies into other cultures. And it's much the same thing when you reverse it. Much of Africa is presented through poverty, through drought and war. [But] you're not presenting people, you're not presenting countries, you're not presenting complexity, and so people can't care about an amorphous mass called Africa.”

People War Country Care America Culture Poverty Mass Complexity Reverse Presenting Drought Other Cultures

Author:Chris Abani

“The linear, mechanistic view of the world which pervades orthodox economics is simply not capable of capturing the richness and complexity of the rhythms and fluctuations of developed economies.”

World Views Economy Capable Economics Rhythm Complexity Orthodox Richness Linear Fluctuation

Author:Paul Ormerod

“For a decade Americans have been steeped in the rhetoric of "zero tolerance" and the faith that virtually all problems from drug addiction to lousy teaching can be solved by pouring on the punishment. Even without a Commander in Chief who pledges to rid the world of evildoers, smoke them out of their holes and the like, we would be vulnerable to the temptation to brush aside frustrating complexities and relieve intolerable fear (at least for the moment) by settling on one or more scapegoats to crush. To imagine that trauma casts out fantasy is a dangerous mistake.”

“The primary consequence of the computational nature of the universe is that the universe naturally generates complex systems, such as life. Although the basic laws of physics are comparatively simple in form, they give rise, because they are computationally universal, to systems of enormous complexity.”

Giving Form Law Universe Simple Consequence Universal Complexes Physics Enormous Primaries Complexity Laws Of Physics Complex Systems

Author:Seth Lloyd

“We're in this strange age where we can't say 'I love you,' at least not sincerely. It's something where, if you simplify it, the whole point of trying to capture it would sort of make it dead. The fragmented thing can create a situation where the holes between the pieces of the puzzle can be filled with meaning, and thereby you get a greater sense of complexity or feeling.”

Ifs Trying Whole Feelings Age Situation Greater Pieces Love You Strange Filled Holes Complexity Capture Puzzles Sincerely Simplify Say I Love You Fragmented

Author:Christoffer Boe

“If physics is too difficult for the physicists, the nonphysicist may wonder whether he should try at all to grasp its complexities and ambiguities. It is undeniably an effort, but probably one worth making, for the basic questions are important and the new experimental results are often fascinating. And if the layman runs into serious perplexities, he can be consoled with the thought that the points which baffle him are more than likely the ones for which the professionals have not found satisfactory answers.”

Ifs Should Trying May Important Running Found Difficult Answers Results Effort Wonder Serious Physics Complexity Fascinating Physicist Ambiguity Perplexity Layman

Author:Edward Condon

“If people want consultative government, the price is increased complexity and delay in arriving at decisions. If they want speed of government, then they must accept a greater degree of authoritarianism. I suspect that the real answer is that most people prefer the latter so long, that is, as government's decisions conform with their own views.”

“Linear programming is viewed as a revolutionary development giving man the ability to state general objectives and to find, by means of the simplex method, optimal policy decisions for a broad class of practical decision problems of great complexity. In the real world, planning tends to be ad hoc because of the many special-interest groups with their multiple objectives.”

“A belief in the purposeful complexity of Fate is always more comforting than random, straightforward facts. This may be why Mother preferred to believe in Atlantis and UFOs rather than in virtually everything else.”

Believe May Facts Mother Belief Fate Complexity Comforting Ufo Straightforward Atlantis

Author:Bradley Denton

“The formation in geological time of the human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field is as unlikely as the separation of the atmosphere into its components. The complexity of the living things has to be present within the material, from which they are derived, or in the laws, governing their formation.”

“The utility of a language as a tool of thought increases with the range of topics it can treat, but decreases with the amount of vocabulary and the complexity of grammatical rules which the user must keep in mind. Economy of notation is therefore important.”

Mind Important Language Economy Amount Tools Treats Increase Range Complexity Users Topics Vocabulary Utility Decrease

Author:Kenneth E. Iverson

“The vulgarization of Darwinism that sees the "struggle for existence" as nothing but the competition for some environmental resource in short supply ignores the large body of evidence about the actual complexity of the relationship between organisms and their resources.”

Body Existence Struggle Evidence Resources Competition Environmental Complexity Organisms Darwinism Struggle For Existence

Author:Richard Lewontin

“An idea is only an idea if it causes unease, debate and reflection. By that standard, Thomas Homer-Dixon's concept of an 'ingenuity gap' is truly a new idea. I can think of no other new concept that so fully condenses all of the challenges we face as a human civilization than the 'ingenuity gap'. Homer-Dixon has found a way to unite all of our concerns about economics, war, population growth, complexity, etc. under a single heading. He is one of an elite group of academics who can write for a mass audience.”

“If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it!”

“If you want to gain market share at your competitor's expense - look for a customer that's suffering from too much complexity and simplify it.”

Ifs Want Looks Suffering Too Much Share Gains Customers Complexity Expenses Competitors Simplify

Author:Peter Cohan

“Ecstasy is not simply joy. Ecstasy is an emotion of great complexity that hovers almost on the edge of terror sometimes.”

Sometimes Joy Emotion Edges Terror Complexity Ecstasy

Author:Terence McKenna

“Everything has complexity. Everything has simplicity. You just grab it.”

Simplicity Complexity

Author:Yoko Ono

“I found that the camera was a comforting companion. It opened up new worlds, and gave me access to people's most intimate moments. I discovered the privilege of seeing life in all its complexity, the thrill of learning something new every day. When I was behind a camera, it was the only place in the world I wanted to be.”

Source: It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigious, but at various points our technologies come into conflict with nature's ways of doing things, as when we seek to maximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast mono-cultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead. A great many of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature's complexities, at both the growing and the eating ends of our food chain.”

Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World

“Look at yourself as someone who is reaching for healing, and at the complexity of what needs to be healed. Do not think that you exist alone without other human beings of equal complexity.”

Thinking Inspirational Needs Humans Looks Human Beings Healing Equal Complexity Reaching Healed Look At Yourself

Author:Gary Zukav

“The pursuit of truth is just a polite name for the intellectual's favorite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for the living complexities of reality.”

Art Philosophy Reality Names Simple History Truth Is Intellectual Pursuit Complexity Polite Abstraction Pastime

Book:The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point

Source: The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point

“Stereotypes are the mind's shorthand for dealing with complexities. They have two aspects: they are much blunter than reality; they are shaped to fit a man's preferences or prejudgments. Thus two principles are involved: differentiation or its lack, and biased preferential perception.”

Men Mind Two Reality Principles Atheism Involved Fit Perception Aspect Positive Atheism Complexity Stereotype Preference Biased Differentiation Shorthand

Author:Robert E Lane

“Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.”

Book Bigs Wise Written Complexity Hearted Richness

Author:Dani Shapiro

“The world is complex, and so too must be the activities that we perform. But that doesn't mean that we must live in continual frustration. No. The whole point of human-centered design is to tame complexity, to turn what would appear to be a complicated tool into one that fits the task, that is understandable, usable, enjoyable.”

World Humans Mean Whole Turns Design Fit Activity Tools Tasks Complexes Complicated Complexity Frustration Enjoyable

Author:Donald A. Norman

“To get our universe, with all of its potential for complexities or any kind of potential for any kind of life-form, everything has to be precisely defined on this knife edge of improbability. [Y]ou have to see the hands of a creator who set the parameters to be just so because the creator was interested in something a little more complicated than random particles.”

Kind Littles Hands Form Universe Edges Creator Complicated Defined Complexity Knives Particles Parameters Improbability

Author:Francis Collins

“We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction.”

Thinking Process Understanding Results Principles Produce Creatures Capable Accidents Expected Complexity Glorious Construction Unpredictable

Book:Full House

Source: Full House

“the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims ... to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy.”

Inspiration Life Is Our Lives Growing Divine Spring Insight Mysterious Complexity Formulas Maxims Slogans Lace

Book:The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss

“Too many escape into complexity these days. For it is an escape for persons to cry, when this question of the equality of peoples is raised in India or in our own South, 'Ah, but the situation is not so simple.' ... no great stride forward is ever made for the individual or for the human race unless the complex situation is reduced to one simple question and its simple answer.”

Humans Persons Made Individual Simple Answers Race Situation Cry India South Raised Complexes Excuse These Days Human Race Complexity Stride

Author:Pearl S. Buck

“The man of fixed ingrained principles who has mapped out a straight course, and has the courage and self-control to adhere to it, does not find life complex. Complexities are all of our own making.”

Men Doe Self Courses Principles He Man Complexes Simplicity Fixed Complexity Self Control

Author:B. C. Forbes

“The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened ' it's just wonderful. And . . . the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.”

“Among all the complaints you hear these days about the crimes of the media, it seems to me the critics miss the big one. It is that especially TV, but also we of the print press, tend to reduce mess and complexity and ambiguity to a simple story line that doesn't reflect reality so much as it distorts it. ... What bothers me about the journalistic tendency to reduce unmanageable reality to self-contained, movielike little dramas is not just that we falsify when we do this. It is also that we really miss the good story.”

“Never can a new idea move within the law. It matters not whether that idea pertains to political and social changes or to any other domain of human thought and expression - to science, literature, music; in fact, everything that makes for freedom and joy and beauty must refuse to move within the law. How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, 'a chariot wheel' which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition, without ever taking into account cause and effect, without ever going into the complexity of the human soul.”

“We are, none of us, 'either' mothers or daughters; to our amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both.”

Mother Greater Daughter Confusion Complexity Amazement

Book:Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution

Source: Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution

“I am a political recidivist. An incorrigible, repeat voter. A career lever-pusher. My electoral rap sheet is as long as your arm. Over the course of three decades, I have voted for presidents and school board members. I have voted in high hopes and high dudgeon. I have voted in favor of candidates and merely against their opponents. I have voted for propositions written with such complexity that I needed Noam Chomsky to deconstruct their meaning. I have been a single-issue voter and a marginal voter. I have even voted for people who ran unopposed. Hold an election and I'll be there.”

“The constant struggle in mature life, I think, is to accept the necessity of tragedy and conflict, and not to try to escape to some falsely simple solution which does not include these more somber complexities.”

Thinking Trying Doe Simple Accepting Struggle Conflict Solutions Tragedy Constant Complexity Mature Somber Constant Struggle Simple Solutions

Book:Letters Home

Source: Letters Home

“Youth is the period of harsh judgments, and a man seldom learns until he reaches thirty that human nature is made up not of simples, but of compounds.”

Men Humans Made Human Nature Youth Periods Judgment Thirty Complexity Harsh Compounds

Book:The Miller of Old Church

Source: The Miller of Old Church

“Ethnic stereotypes are misshapen pearls, sometimes with a sandy grain of truth at their center. ... but they ignore complexity, change, and individuality.”

Sometimes Individuality Complexity Grain Stereotype Pearls Sandy Ethnic Stereotypes

Author:Anna Quindlen

“Theatre is simply what cannot be expressed by any other means; a complexity of words, movements, gestures that convey a vision of the world inexpressible in any other way.”

World Way Mean Vision Movement Theatre Complexity Gestures

Author:Eugene Ionesco

“I've always noticed that nobody can be single-minded who isn't narrow-minded; and I think it likely that people who aren't so cocksure what they want to do with themselves, hesitate because they have a great deal more to deal with. A nature rich in fine and complex possibilities takes more time to dispose of itself, but when it does, the world's beauty is the gainer.”

People Thinking World Want Doe Deals Rich Possibility Fine Complexes Uncertainty Complexity More Time Narrow-minded

Book:The Bent Twig

Source: The Bent Twig

“The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. 'Nothing is my last word about anything,' said Henry James. Furnishing opinions, even correct opinions - whenever asked - cheapens what novelists and poets do best, which is to sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity. Information will never replace illumination.”

Said Lasts Literature Opinion Information Poet Pursue Propaganda Novelists Complexity Last Words Illumination Sponsors

Book:At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

Source: At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

“If responsibility for the upbringing of children is to continue to be vested in the family, then the rights of children will be secured only when parents are able to make a living for their families with so little difficulty that they may give their best thought and energy to the child's development and the problem of helping it adjust itself to the complexities of the modern environment.”

Ifs Giving May Children Littles Helping Problem Able Energy Parent Responsibility Poverty Environment Rights Modern Development Difficulty Complexity Upbringing Secured

Author:Suzanne La Follette

“The United Nations emerged as a temple of official good intentions, a place where governments might - without abating their transgressions - go to church; a place made remote - by agreed untruth and procedural complexity, and by tedium itself - from the risk of intense public involvement.”

Made Government Might Nations Church United Risk Intention Intense Complexity Officials Temples United Nations Involvement Good Intentions Untruth Transgression Tedium

Author:Shirley Hazzard

“I am not just a lesbian. I am not just a poet. I am not just a mother. Honor the complexity of your vision and yourselves.”

Mother Vision Poet Honor Complexity

Author:Audre Lorde

“... we are the products of our past. ... a web of complexities.”

Past Products Complexity Our Past

Author:Janet Leigh

“Pain heightens every sense. More powerfully than any drug, it intensifies colors, sounds, sight, feelings. Pain is like a glass wall. It is impossible to climb it, but you must, and, somehow, you do. Then there is an explosion of brilliance and the world is more apparent in its complexity and beauty.”

World Feelings Pain Sound Impossible Color Wall Drug Sight Glasses Complexity Climbs Explosions Brilliance Feeling Pain

Book:Journey

Source: Journey