Complexity Quotes - Page 27

• Madame Bovary is timeless. It is not just about the female condition in France in the 1840s. It's not a simple cautionary tale. Emma is more than a character; she gives us an insight into human nature. With Emma, we are diving into the complexities of Flaubert's psyche.

  Sophie Barthes

  Character, Simple, Giving

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Even in the obscure vast history of a planet the time it takes to make a forest counts. It takes a while. And not every planet can do it; it is no common effect, that tangling of the sun's first cool light in the shadow and complexity of innumberable wind-stirred branches.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Light, Wind, Shadow

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• Three reasons problems are inevitable; first, we live in a world of growing complexity and diversity; second, we interact with people; and third, we cannot control all the situation we face.

  John C. Maxwell

  People, Diversity, Three

  John C. Maxwell (2006). “Motivated to Succeed: Inspirational Selections from John C. Maxwell”, p.73, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Indeed, we have reached a level of complexity where simplicity itself is suspect. For example, the simple reality is that jobs migrate to less difficult nations. It's the old Rule of Capital: Capital goes where it is treated well.

  Oliver DeMille

  Jobs, Simple, Reality

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• I've had a very interesting life. There are ways of handling the complexities. I'm willing to take on the responsibilities as a father, as a producer, as an actor; and I enjoy that. I've always been changing and evolving and growing. There's no pinnacle of power where you can sit back and relax.

  Tom Cruise

  Father, Responsibility, Interesting

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• In complexity, it is only simplicity that can be interesting.

  Steven Weinberg

  Interesting, Simplicity

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Lake Views”, p.112, Harvard University Press

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• Considering the inconceivable complexity of processes even in a simple cell, it is little short of a miracle that the simplest possible model - namely, a linear equation between two variables - actually applies in quite a general number of cases.

  Ludwig von Bertalanffy

  Simple, Two, Numbers

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• The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity.

  Jacob Burckhardt

  Essence, Denial, Tyranny

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• Nowadays theologians aren't quite so straightforward as Paley. They don't point to complex living mechanisms and say that they are self-evidently designed by a creator, just like a watch. But there is a tendency to point to them and say 'It is impossible to believe' that such complexity, or such perfection, could have evolved by natural selection. Whenever I read such a remark, I always feel like writing 'Speak for yourself' in the margin.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Writing, Self

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.46, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I think that electronic music mirrors the complexity of "information landscapes." You carry the terrain in your mind.

  DJ Spooky

  Thinking, Mirrors, Mind

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Watching 40 mile chunks of ice break off of Antarctica will change your life forever, but realizing that driving a car, or flying a plane, or having a nice steak, or drinking from a plastic bottle all contributed to the destruction of the environment - it's a bit complex, but music needs to pave the way for getting people to think about this kind of complexity. I'm just doing my share.

  DJ Spooky

  Nice, Drinking, Thinking

  "DJ Spooky’s Icy Philharmonic". Interview with Hannah Levintova, www.motherjones.com. October 17, 2011.

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• It's important to understand the work that's being done, and to make sure it's actually helping. And sometimes, by working on it myself, I get a better grasp of the challenges and complexities of the task, and I'm able to talk about it better. That's why a balance of actual work and awareness is good, because they feed each other.

  Regine Chassagne

  Challenges, Balance, Important

  "Arcade Fire’s Band Aid for Haiti". Interview with Alan Light, www.motherjones.com. January/February 2011.

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• No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individual.

  Frank Herbert

  Lonely, Simple, Civilization

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Dune Messiah”, p.132, Penguin

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• Life is easy greediness adds complexity

  John Simm

  Life, Add, Easy

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• Every movie has its complexities and its challenges.

  Simon Kinberg

  Challenges

  "Producer Roundtable: 6 Filmmakers on 'Compton' Threats, Tarantino Outbursts and the Truth Behind a 'Star Wars' 'Firing'". Interview with Stephen Galloway and Matthew Belloni, www.hollywoodreporter.com. November 11, 2015.

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• The key of writing fiction isn't just to remove something that the reader or listener can easily imagine. It's not a matter of being coy, or withholding information. It's allowing for multiple possibilities, recognizing the complexity of human behavior, and making the world of a piece of fiction as marvelously confounding as the world we live in.

  Peter Turchi

  Writing, Keys, Fiction

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• One universe, four forces, billions of galaxies. The precision and complexity of our world is enough to make even the famous cosmologist go just a little bit crazy. How does it all fit together? Is there a single, overarching design to the cosmos? And if we find it, will we glimpse the mind of God?

  Morgan Freeman

  Crazy, Our World, Design

  "Morgan Freeman Takes You 'Through The Wormhole'". "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. June 1, 2010.

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• The greatness of common sense, and its title to reverence, appear in this, that it deals with vast complexity, that is, with the innumerable elements of a situation. Common sense discerns and judges a path through this knotted and tangled maze.

  James Vila Blake

  Greatness, Common Sense, Judging

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• Treatment of the apparently whimsical fluctuations of the stock quotations as truly non stationary processes requires a model of such complexity that its practical value is likely to be limited. An additional complication, not encompassed by most stock market models, arises from the manifestation of the market as a nonzero sum game.

  Richard Arnold Epstein

  Games, Whimsical, Arise

  "The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic, Revised Edition". Book by Richard Arnold Epstein, Chapter Nine, Weighted Statistical Logic And Statistical Games, 1977.

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• To invoke a Kierkegaardesque figure of speech, the beauty of the language of the Bible can be like a set of dentist's instruments nearly laid out on a table and hanging on a wall, intriguing in their technological complexity and with their stainless steel highly polished--until they set to work on the job for which they were originally designed. Then all of a sudden my reaction changes from "How shiny and beautiful they all are!" to "Get that damned thing out of my mouth!

  Jaroslav Pelikan

  Beautiful, Bible, Jobs

  Jaroslav Pelikan (2006). “Whose Bible Is It?: A Short History of the Scriptures”, p.229, Penguin

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• Today, as we have seen, fascism and communism are discredited, but are replaced by a paraphilic consumer culture driven by fantasy, desperately in search of distractions and escalating sensations, and a fundamentalist culture wherein the rigors of a private journey are shunned in favor of an ideology that, at the expense of the paradoxes and complexities of truth, favors one-sided resolutions, black-and-white values, and a privileging of one's own complexes as the norm for others.

  James Hollis

  Black And White, Journey, Today

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• Learning to live with ambiguity is learning to live with how life really is, full of complexities and strange surprises.

  James Hollis

  Strange, Surprise, Ambiguity

  James Hollis (2008). “What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life”, p.156, Penguin

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• In moments of spiritual crisis we naturally fall back upon what worked for us, or seemed to work, heretofore. Sometimes this shows up through the reassertion of our old values in belligerent, testy ways. Regression of any kind is just such a return to old presumptions, often after they have been shown to be insufficient for the complexity of larger questions. The virtue of the old presumptions is that they once worked, or seemed to work, and therein lies if not certainty, then nostalgia for a previous, presumptive security. In our private lives, we frequently fall back upon our old roles.

  James Hollis

  Spiritual, Lying, Fall

  James Hollis (2008). “What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life”, p.101, Penguin

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• We are so mired in the complexity of our reactions to other people that when you come across someone who is asocial, there is a simplicity that is refreshing.

  Ben Whishaw

  People, Simplicity, Reactions

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". labs.imdb.com.

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• The smell of subjectivity clings to the mechanical definition of complexity as stubbornly as it sticks to the definition of information.

  Hans Christian von Baeyer

  Smell, Definitions, Information

  Hans Christian Von Baeyer (2004). “Information: The New Language of Science”, p.104, Harvard University Press

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