Quotes About Complexity

We have long known that in closed societies, the arrival of democracy, with its clashing voices and differing opinions, can be "complex and frightening," as Stenner puts it, for people unaccustomed to public dissent.

If she were more perfect she would be less interesting

I don't know how to talk to you, Mrs. Huntingdon . . . you are only half a woman--your nature must be half human, half angelic. Such goodness overawes me; I don't know what to make of it.

We do not always like the people we love- we do not always have that choice.

Little bundle of contradictions

Nu degeaba se spune despre mine c? sunt un m?nunchi de contradic?ii!

She has so many bad traits, why should I single out just one of them?

Reality is unforgivingly complex.

I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don't think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex.

I guess he'll have to figure out someday that he is supposed to have this dark side, that it is part of what it means to be human, to have the darkness just as much as the light- that in fact the dark parts make the light visible; without them, the light would disappear. But I guess he has to figure other stuff out first, like how to keep his neck from flopping all over the place and how to sit up.

The world has an awful beauty. This is a chaotic place, humanity is a chaotic place, and I am a chaotic place.

Jesus was a rabbi, schooled by rabbis, who thought like rabbis. Rabbis, upon being asked a question by a disciple, usually answer with a paradoxical inquiry or a story. This can be annoying and time-consuming for those of us looking for neat, simple answers. But truth is too wild and complex to be contained in one answer, so Jesus often responded with a question or a parable.

Beauty is a miracle of things going together imperfectly.

For instance, I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don't think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex.

Given the infinite variety of human personalities, it was impossible to like everyone.

She sorted out the young men. Tanner's opportunism amused but did not specifically attract her; the blond Nordsen seemed too simple; dark-haired Al-atpay had a kind of obstinacy with which she felt no compassion: Mir-Ahnin's bitterness hinted an inner darkness she did not wish to lighten, although he made the biggest outward play for her attention.

what we call a chaotic system—meaning that its adjacent solutions diverge exponentially in time.

They waited until I was asleep, then roused themselves, exhausted as swimmers, grey between the empty trees. Their hair in tufts, open sores where ears used to be, grubs twisting from their chests. The grotesque remains of incomplete lives, the embodied complexities of desires eternally denied.

The grotesque remains of incomplete lives, the embodied complexity of desires eternally denied

What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. Look at us. We run a tightrope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head. Baby-carriage, parasol. kitchen chair, still under control. Steady now! This is not the life of a simplicity but the life of a multiplicity that the wise men warn us of.

Because we cannot deal with the many as individuals, we sometimes try to simplify the many into an abstraction called the mass. Because we cannot deal with the complexity of the present, we often over-ride it and live in a simplified dream of the future. Because we cannot solve our own problems right here at home, we talk about problems out there in the world. An escape process goes on from the intolerable burden we have placed upon ourselves.

How little one guessed of people when one saw them only in the single dimension of a few days or weeks; how they lacked all the substance of the past. They seemed almost flat, like cardboard, with all the depth gone.

I've been wondering how much of a person is on the surface, how much we really know about anyone at all. We don't really know very much about each other, never mind those with whom we have only an acquaintanceship.

not everything comes with an easy answer, or without a price.