Complexity Quotes - Page 33

• The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.

  Bill Gates

  Caring, Littles, Too Much

  Bill Gates' Commencement Address at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, news.harvard.edu. June 7, 2007.

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• If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of your solutions - for the fun of it - then one day you'll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one! And that's the way to become a computer scientist.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Fun, One Day, Done

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• Men rush toward complexity; but yearn for simplicity.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Simplicity

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• I like bringing little subtle complexities to a character. It's all about the subtext. No one can really describe or fully know another human being, even if they get a hook on them. It's more about instinctively knowing whether you like somebody or not.

  Ray Stevenson

  Character, Knowing, Hook

  Source: collider.com

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• Checklists turn out...to be among the basic tools of the quality and productivity revolution in aviation, engineering, construction - in virtually every field combining high risk and complexity. Checklists seem lowly and simplistic, but they help fill in for the gaps in our brains and between our brains.

  Atul Gawande

  Engineering, Risk, Brain

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• Complexity - limits competition.

  Seth Klarman

  Competition, Limits

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• Where you have complexity, by nature you can have fraud and mistakes. You'll have more of that than in a company that shovels sand from a river and sells it. This will always be true of financial companies, including ones run by governments. If you want accurate numbers from financial companies, you're in the wrong world.

  Charlie Munger

  Running, Mistake, Government

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• The tragedy with velocity as the answer to complexity is that, after awhile, you cannot see or comprehend anything that is not traveling at the same speed you are. And you actually start to feel disturbed by people who have a sense of restfulness to their existence.

  David Whyte

  People, Tragedy, Answers

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• Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

  Alan Perlis

  Top Down, Simplicity, Doe

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• The income tax has spawned an intrusive bureaucracy, creating so much complexity and red tape that millions of ordinary citizens have to go get some accountant to fill out the forms for them - and then sign under penalty of perjury that it was done right. If you knew how to do it right, you wouldn't have to go to somebody else to have it done, would you?

  Thomas Sowell

  Creating, Ordinary, Income

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• Complexity and obscurity have professional value - they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Men, Class, Competition

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1980). “Annals of an Abiding Liberal”, Plume

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• Wordsmiths who serve established power...castrate the public imagination by subjecting language to a complexity which renders it private. Elitism is always their aim.

  John Ralston Saul

  Imagination, Language, Aim

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• Perhaps, you know, new laws, new domains of potential openness are occurring as the universe ages, and complexity previously disallowed is now possible, and we are that complexity. We are nature moving out of its genetic phase - a phase under the control of chemical genes, which are physical structures, in to an epigenetic phase, a phase of culture ruled by codes, transformable culturally confined codes - mathematics, religion, philosophy, art, dance, humor.

  Terence McKenna

  Art, Philosophy, Moving

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• You cannot communicate complicated information to large groups of people. As you increase the number of people, you have to decrease the complexity of the information.

  Andy Stanley

  Numbers, People, Groups

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• Biology is a way of approaching the truth about the mind. In biology most people don't tackle problems at the level of complexity that psychoanalysis does. But psychoanalysis has a degree of uncertainty about it. A psychoanalyst may have some deep insights, but cannot, at the moment, run experiments to establish whether it's really the truth.

  Eric Kandel

  Running, People, Mind

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Don't accept the excuse of complexity.

  Keith Rabois

  Excuse, Accepting

  "Lecture 14: How to Operate". Keith Rabois' "How To Start a Startup" lecture to the class at Stanford University in Stanford, California, genius.com. November 6, 2014.

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• The complexity of the language of images is disguised by the ease and rapidity with which we read them. I've tried to make work that is as transparent and simple as possible. No matter how much I strip away the result is always more complex to me than I expect.

  Michael Craig-Martin

  Simple, Ease, Matter

  Source: briansherwin-artcritic.blogspot.com

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• Yeah, leading an examined life, I always say, is a pain in the ass. It adds an element of complexity to business that most businessmen don't want to hear about. They just want to call a fabric manufacturer, and say, "Hey, give us 10,000 yards of shirting."

  Yvon Chouinard

  Business, Pain, Giving

  "The TH Interview: Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia". Interview with Jacob Gordon, www.treehugger.com. February 7, 2008.

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• I would love to photograph Angelina Jolie. A friend of mine is working with her on her next film and told me what I was already suspecting, that she is extremely interesting. I have never seen a picture of her that conveys all of her complexity. That would be a fabulous challenge, to find that in a photograph.

  Peter Lindbergh

  Interesting, Challenges, Would Be

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• For most of modern life, our strong talents and desires for group effort have been filtered through relatively rigid institutional structures because of the complexity of managing groups. We haven't had all the groups we've wanted, we've simply had the groups we could afford. The old limits of what unmanaged and unpaid groups can do are no longer in operation.

  Clay Shirky

  Strong, Effort, Political

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• The aspects of global warming that matter most to people - how rapidly will the seas rise? Are hurricanes already getting stronger? How strong will they get as a result of warming? Those are still immersed in complexity. So in those realms that catch people's attention most, or that get used as symbols by environmental campaigners, those facets really do come with significant back-and-forthing.

  Andrew Revkin

  Strong, Sea, People

  "Q&A: Andrew C. Revkin". Mother Jones Interview, www.motherjones.com. November/December 2008.

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• I like what Barcelona is doing. This city almost perfectly combines its natural advantages with cultural attractions, IT parks and first-rate educational opportunities. The same applies for Dublin, which manages to achieve a blend of complexity, tolerance and artistry and makes a point of not devoting every part of the city to the tourism industry. Sometimes creativity also means forgoing short-term profits and simply saying no.

  Charles Landry

  Educational, Mean, Creativity

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• That it should be the questions and shape of a life, its total complexity gathered, arranged, and considered, which matters in the end, not some stamp of salvation or damnation that disperses all the complexity into some unsatisfying little decision - the balancing of scales.

  Tony Kushner

  Decision, Shapes, Littles

  Tony Kushner (2013). “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition”, p.39, Theatre Communications Group

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• I don't [believe in God]. I have a problem with religion or anything else that says, 'We have all the answers,' because there's no such thing as 'the answers.' We're complex. We change our minds on issues all the time. Religion leaves no room for human complexity.

  Daniel Radcliffe

  Believe, Issues, Mind

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• We are living in complex, difficult times and I wanted Syriana to reflect this complexity in a visceral way, to embrace it narratively. There are no good guys and no bad guys and there are no easy answers. The characters do not have traditional character arcs; the stories don't wrap up in neat little life lessons, the questions remain open. The hope was that by not wrapping everything up, the film will get under your skin in a different way and stay with you longer. This seemed like the most honest reflection of this post 9-11 world we all find ourselves in.

  Stephen Gaghan

  Life Lesson, Character, Reflection

  "Syriana - Preview" by Jack Foley, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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