Quotes About Opacity

There were many markings in pencil, and those strange symbols again, dashed off, it seemed, revealing their opacity what a complex and abstract thing written language is.

neither a concept nor an image is transparent, and that this opacity signals that an element of subjectivity is always in play in human affairs.

The dramatic arises out of the margin of opaqueness between a writer and his personages, out of the potential for the unexpected. In the full dramatic character lurks the unforeseen possibility, the gift of disorder.

The certainty of incoherence in reading, the inevitable crumbling of the soundest constructions, is the deep truth of books. Since appearance constitutes a limit, what truly exists is a dissolution into common opacity rather than a development of lucid thinking. The apparent unchangingness of books is deceptive: each book is also the sum of the misunderstandings it occasions.

obfuscating everything in sight

another story leave it dark no the same story not two stories leave it dark all the same like the rest a little darker a few words all the same a few old words like for the rest stop panting let it stop

Fog obscured the distant towers of Manhattan, allowing only pale silhouettes of the World Trade Center to rise above gray and white opacity.

What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence.

So this was how secrets got started, I thought to myself. People constructed them little by little. I had not intended to keep May Kasahara a secret from Kumiko. My relationship with her was not that big a deal, finally: whether I mentioned it or not was of no consequence. Once it had flown down a certain delicate channel, however, it had become cloaked in the opacity of secretiveness, whatever my original intention had have been.

Any unveiling is also veiling. No matter how transparent our governments want to be, governments will be selectively transparent.

The fact that it is such an opaque industry should be alarming," Brad said. "The fact that the people who make the most money want the least clarity possible—that should be alarming, too.

Inside a dark pool, no one but the broker who ran it had any idea what was happening.

the Wall Street firm became a black box. The shareholders who financed the risk taking had no real understanding of what the risk takers were doing, and, as the risk taking grew ever more complex, their understanding diminished.

Men tighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding, Reflecting a pocket-torch of observation Upon each other's opacity Neglecting all the admonitions From the world around the corner

Generally when there's a lot of smoke... there's just a whole lot more smoke.

These days, the bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does. Time was when a car company made cars, a mining company dug mines. It's not like that anymore.

power is tolerable only on condition that it masks a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to an ability to hide its own mechanisms.

I grew up in society when lots of things were hidden, and they were not hidden just one way, but it was very complicated.

Contrary to the assumptions of Western moral traditions, human beings are (1) not free in their actions but governed by necessity; (2) not transparent to themselves and others in their motivations, but opaque; (3) not similar to each other and therefore subject to the same moral code, but each different.

Generally when there's a lot of smoke...there's just a whole lot more smoke.

History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, the generator of history.

Under opacity and in the newfound complexity of the world, people can hide risks and hurt others, with the law incapable of catching them. Iatrogenics has both delayed and invisible consequences. It is hard to see causal links, to fully understand what's going on. Under such epistemic limitations, skin in the game is the only true mitigator of fragility.

There is this error of thinking that things always have a reason that is accessible to us—that we can comprehend easily.

complex systems do not have obvious one-dimensional cause-and-effect mechanisms, and that under opacity, you do not mess with such a system.