“The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.” MomentsStoriesOrderCultureMoralCivilizationIndiaComplexesTalesIslamicDelicateEvidentConquestDiscouragingBarbariansInvadingMultiplying Author:Will Durant
“One of the marked superiorities the English enjoy over other peoples is their ability to imbue the foreigner with a crippling inferiority complex the moment he sets foot on British soil.” MomentsEnjoyAbilityFeetComplexesBritishSoilSuperiorityForeignersInferiorityInferiority Complex Author:Pierre Daninos
“The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, inconceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity.” HeartBookMomentsLastsLevelsCapableIllusionMadComplexesMetaphorWavePatternsTalesIdiotNonsenseMathematicianAbsurdityParticlesReflectingMockNever EndingGrotesqueTurtles Author:Martin Gardner
“People aren't very good listeners, by nature. Part of being a good communicator is recognizing and understanding that and trying to make the complex simple. I try to capture a concept, an idea or a moment in a few words. If they remember it, job done.” PeopleIfsTryingIdeasDoneMomentsJobsRememberUnderstandingSimpleConceptsComplexesVery GoodCaptureListenersRecognizingFew WordsCommunicatorsGood Listener Author:Mike Tomlin
“I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working parts lacking visible connections. The other night, driving through a hilly, wooded part of southern New England, I wondered about this. If not like an organism, what is it like, what is it most like? Then, satisfactorily for that moment, it came to me: it is most like a single cell” IfsThinkingWayTryingKindHas BeensMomentsBigsEarthNightConnectionsEnglandComplexesDrivingCellsVisibleThat MomentSouthernOrganismsLackingNew England Book:A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays Source: A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays
“Many of the finest and most interesting emotions perish forever, because too complex and fugitive for expression. Of all things relating to man, his feelings are perhaps the most evanescent, the greater part dying in the moment of their birth. But while emotions perish, thought blended in diction is immortal.” MenMomentsFeelingsInterestingEmotionForeverGreaterDyingExpressionBirthAll ThingsComplexesImmortalFinestMost InterestingFugitiveDiction Author:William Benton Clulow