Quotes About Complexity

Because the results are expressed in numbers, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking that the intelligence test is a measure like a foot ruler or a pair of scales. It is, of course, a quite different sort of measure. Intelligence is not an abstraction like length and weight; it is an exceedingly complicated notion - which nobody has yet succeeded in defining.

For the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. And although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.

Those whom we love and admire most are the men and women whose consciousness is peopled thickly with persons rather than with types, who know us rather than the classification into which we might fit.

The world is vast, the situations that concern us are intricate, the messages are few, the biggest part of opinion must be constructed in the imagination.

There is economy in this. For the attempt to see all things freshly and in detail, rather than as types and generalities, is exhausting, and among busy affairs practically out of the question. In

humans love complexity of thought. This they pursue on the totally baseless assumption that complexity indicates profundity or truth.

With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!

Well, contemplation is always a gift, right? So you have to ask for it. It is a thing for which to beg, honestly, because it seems to me when we enter upon the contemplative gaze it is a sliver of revelation. We ask God to show us the beauty of the familiar, the complexity behind the obvious, and the struggle behind repeated failures, the patterns of behavior, because in the end the dysfunctions around us are not ever really conquered, they fade away and are replaced by new ones.

Je problematischer der Charakter, desto problemloser erscheint ihm die Welt.

You could never know what transpired beneath another's skin.

That word process is key. You don't just "find" answers to complex life problems (or any type of complex problem, including business ones). You work your way, gradually, toward figuring out those answers, relying on questions each step of the way.

Part of the value in asking naïve questions, Bennett says, is that it forces people to explain things simply, which can help bring clarity to an otherwise complex issue. "If I just keep saying, 'I don't get it, can you tell me why once more?,' it forces people to synthesize and simplify—to strip away the irrelevances and get to the core idea.

In our view,… derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

a country coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting new difficulties and impediments;

She would tell me parts of her story, but they never added up, and, intoxicated, I probed no further. I was grateful that Moira Orfei was endless, and that she never told me the true story of her difficult life.

If only her problems were as simple as dealing with a handful of townspeople with pitchforks...

This is a history, not the history, of the Hindus.

Gossip went on forever. As Mr. Auden said, 'There is always a great deal of interest in a door behind which something is happening'—but gossip belonged in the realms of a small and uncompassionate world, and Wilfred had seen that the world was larger and more multiple than could ever be described and explained by tittle-tattle.

For as much as Hillary Clinton might hate admitting this about Monica Lewinisky, Eleanor Roosevelt about Missy Le Hand, Queen Alexandra about Lillie Langtry, Lady Nelson about Emma Hamilton, or Jackie about Marilyn, the reality is that despite their intrinsic animosity toward each other, on a a deep level, the wife and the mistress generally have far more in common than they might care to admit and could, had fate dealt them different cards, even been true friends.

We are here because over billions of years, countless variables fell into place, any of which could have taken another path. We are essentially a beautiful fluke, as are the millions of other species with which we share this planet. Our cells are composed of atoms and dust particles from distant galaxies, and from the billions of living organisms that inhabited this planet before us.