Complexity Quotes - Page 6

• Gender has always been considered a fact immutable. But we now know it's actually more fluid, complex, and mysterious. Because of my success, I never have the courage to share my story. Not because I thought what I am is wrong but because of how the world treats those of us who wish to break free.

  Geena Rocero

  Wish, Stories, World

  "Why I must come out". TED conference, www.ted.com. March 2014.

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• O Marvelous! What new configuration will come next? I am bewildered with multiplicity.

  William Carlos Williams

  Next, Chaos, Marvelous

  William Carlos Williams (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams”, p.36, New Directions Publishing

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• Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees. Reminding us, that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings who are self-blinded to the truth of the world’s stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp – and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all it’s immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble.

  Dean Koontz

  Reality, Self, Sea

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• In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them -- those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can enver focus enough to learn.

  Robert Greene

  Media, Skills, Discipline

  Robert Greene (2012). “Mastery”, p.73, Profile Books

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• The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Yoga, Practice, Faces

  Sri Aurobindo (2016). “The Synthesis of Yoga: Art of living”, p.55, editionNEXT.com

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• A system tends to grow in complexity instead of simplicity, until the resulting unreliability becomes intolerable.

  Paul Dickson

  Simplicity, Unreliability, Grows

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• There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable.

  Peter Drucker

  Manageable

  "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices". Book by Peter F. Drucker, 1973.

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• 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.

  Peter Cohan

  Suffering, Want, Too Much

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• Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Simple, Sophistication, Devices

  "The Age of Uncertainty". Documentary, 1977.

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• If complexity doesn't beat you, paradox will.

  Tom Robbins

  Paradox, Beats, Ifs

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• When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple, you don't really understand the complexity of the problem. Then you get into the problem, and you see that it's really complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That's sort of the middle, and that's where most people stop... But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem - and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works.

  Steve Jobs

  Beautiful, Simple, Keys

  "Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything". Book by Steven Levy, www.businessinsider.com. June 1, 2000.

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• ...the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Simplicity, Sides, Found

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• There are thousands of proteins in the cells, some of them very large chains of molecules. And the cell doesn't function if one of those chains of molecules isn't there, and you start looking at the complexity of life and the mystery of life, and then start thinking about things like the twenty universal constants, that if any one of them from Plank's minimum to the mass of a proton, if one of them is the tiniest bit off, there would be no life or possibility of it in the universe.

  Dean Koontz

  Thinking, Cells, Twenties

  "The Rumpus Interview With Dean Koontz". Interview with Ben Pfeiffer, therumpus.net. December 21, 2015.

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• The great unexplored frontier is complexity ... I am convinced that the nations and people that master the new science of Complexity will become the economic, cultural, and political superpowers of the next century.

  Heinz Pagels

  People, Political, Next

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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.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Retirement, Mean, Successful

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.429, Transaction Publishers

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• It is only with local [agriculture] that we can manage the complexity and care that sustainability requires.

  Vandana Shiva

  Agriculture, Care, Sustainability

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• Forget the complaints against complexity; instead, complain about confusion.

  Donald A. Norman

  Confusion, Complaining, Forget

  Donald A. Norman (2010). “Living with Complexity”, p.4, MIT Press

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• This is a general law of the universe, overlooked by science, that out of complexity emerges greater complexity. We could almost say that the universe, nature, is a novelty-conserving, or complexity-conserving engine.

  Terence McKenna

  Law, Novelty, Overlooked

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• There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world -- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles. The more you understand, the more you look, the greater is your enjoyment of life and your sense of peace. That's all there is to it. Everything else is fun and games. If an activity is not grounded in "to love" or "to learn" it does not have value.

  Anne Rice

  Beauty, Fun, Games

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• Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have - whether it's something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.

  Bill Gates

  Running, Cutting, Technology

  Remarks of Bill Gates, Harvard Commencement, news.harvard.edu. June 7, 2007.

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• Extrapolated, technology wants what life wants:
  Increasing efficiency
  Increasing opportunity
  Increasing emergence
  Increasing complexity
  Increasing diversity
  Increasing specialization
  Increasing ubiquity
  Increasing freedom
  Increasing mutualism
  Increasing beauty
  Increasing sentience
  Increasing structure
  Increasing evolvability

  Kevin Kelly

  Technology, Opportunity, Ubiquity

  Kevin Kelly (2010). “What Technology Wants”, p.244, Penguin

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• You have got to welcome and embrace complexity.

  Paul Singer

  Welcome, Embrace

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• Creating simplicity often makes the heart leap; order has been restored, the crooked made straight. But order is understanding that things cannot be made simple, that complexity reigns and must be accepted.

  Marina Warner

  Heart, Simple, Creating

  Marina Warner (2013). “Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism”, p.249, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Complexity can be a trap. You can have a ball developing a phrase, inverting it, playing it in different keys and times and all. But it's really more introspective than communicative. Like a crossword puzzle compared to a poem.

  Paul Desmond

  Keys, Different, Balls

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• Why pamper life's complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat?

  Steven Morrissey

  Running, Philosophy, Smooth

  "Song: 'This Charming Man'". 1984.

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