Complexity Quotes - Page 8

• Dostoevsky was the first to reveal to us this teeming multiplicity of emotions, this complexity of our spiritual universe.

  Stefan Zweig

  Spiritual, Firsts, Emotion

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• I claim that many patterns of Nature are so irregular and fragmented, that, compared with Euclid - a term used in this work to denote all of standard geometry - Nature exhibits not simply a higher degree but an altogether different level of complexity ... The existence of these patterns challenges us to study these forms that Euclid leaves aside as being "formless," to investigate the morphology of the "amorphous."

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Science, Challenges, Different

  The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 91, No. 9, (p. 594), November 1984.

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• The novelist is the person who spends a lot of his or her day thinking about the human drama and emotional complexity.

  Thane Rosenbaum

  Drama, Emotional, Thinking

  "The 'Ready for Her Close-Up" Transcript" by Dahlia Lithwick, www.slate.com. May 26, 2015.

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• The complexity of the situation of having a war going on around you and what that delivers to you is that you have to figure out which side to take.

  Jamie Bell

  War, Sides, Figures

  "Jamie Bell Talks Turn, Coming to Television, Physical Challenges, Researching the Historical Setting, and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. April 18, 2014.

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• A person with friends need never be bored. There is always more to fathom and enjoy in the complexity of others, and always the possibility of finding a way to delight them.

  Stephanie Mills

  Boredom, Needs, Delight

  Stephanie Mills (2003). “Epicurean Simplicity”, p.122, Island Press

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• My journey is technical complexity.

  Peter Wolf

  Journey, My Journey

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• Black life is ambiguous, and a kaleidoscope of meanings, rich, multi-sided . . . we have frozen our vision in figures that caricature, at best the complexity of our lives and leave the real artistic chore of interpretation unfinished.

  Charles Bartlett Johnson

  Real, Black, Vision

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• Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions. [...] It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. [...] You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.

  Steve Jobs

  Hard Work, Simple, Order

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• Most of the complexity of the stories has developed as the stories came along (and may be a product of the principle that "nothing is what it seems"). I did start with some essential ambiguousness in the aliens' motivation and the questions this raises in human minds, which I consider to have been disregarded in Contact (novel and film). That, in part, may be what has delayed the writing of the fifth and sixth novelettes in the series.

  James Gunn

  Motivation, Writing, Mind

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• Participatory complexity may well be the key descriptor of the 21st century - in our economies, in our politics, and in our everyday lives.

  Jamais Cascio

  Keys, Everyday, May

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• Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Yield, Simplicity, Might

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.355, Harvard University Press

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• The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.

  Chinua Achebe

  Running, Writing, Tired

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.50, Penguin

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• Some people fear seeing or feeling anything about which there is no general agreement. For others, it is thrilling to be aware of innuendo, shading, complexity.

  Deena Metzger

  Fear, Agreement, People

  Deena Metzger (2009). “Writing for Your Life: Discovering the Story of Your Life's Jou”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• When you think about the complexity of our natural world - plants using quantum mechanics for photosynthesis, for example - a smartphone begins to look like a pretty dumb object.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Thinking, Smartphones, Dumb

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

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• Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.

  Rita Dove

  Mean, Spirit, Be True To Yourself

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• I'm using the afterlife as a backdrop against which to explore the joys and complexities of being human - it turns out that it's a great lens with which to understand what matters to us.

  David Eagleman

  Afterlife, What Matters, Joy

  "David Eagleman: 'We won't die - our consciousness will live forever on the internet'". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. April 3, 2010.

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• I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty.

  Barbara Kruger

  Artist, Trying, Degrees

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• I go into any movie that's historical fiction thinking, 'OK, I'm here to watch a work of art, something delivering a series of opinions, and if it's a good work of art, these opinions become so deeply embedded in complexity and richness that I won't even be bothered by the opinions. I'll make my own mind up.'

  Tony Kushner

  Art, Thinking, Historical

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• This was her life. Not the life she had once dreamed of, not a life her younger self would ever have imagined or desired, but the life she was living, with all its complexities. This was her life, built with care and attention, and it was good.

  Kim Edwards

  Father, Self, Care

  Kim Edwards (2010). “The Memory Keeper's Daughter”, p.328, Penguin UK

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• To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives.

  John Updike

  Animal, Frustrated, Suffering

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• We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity.

  Patti Smith

  Spiritual, Fall, Son

  Patti Smith (2010). “Just Kids”, p.245, A&C Black

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• Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever.

  Donald Miller

  Christian, Heart, Ideas

  Donald Miller (2007). “Miller 3-in-1: Blue Like Jazz, Through Painted Deserts, Searching for God”, p.117, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• It {Darwin's theory of evolution] was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

  Douglas Adams

  Religious, Silly, Ignorance

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• The complexity embedded in the different levels of meaning that go along with the words "I love you" ought to be a whole mindfuck of a video game

  Rachel Cohn

  Love You, Games, Different

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2014). “Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List”, p.9, Egmont UK

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• We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Wise, Believe, People

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