Quotes About Complexity

History is not just about the things we like or the people we want to love and admire—a fantasy date with our favorite dead person.

What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.

Were the earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well; we would wake, blink, walk two steps to get the whole picture, and lapse into a dreamless sleep.

It's not always about writing more words or drinking more coffee. Sometimes getting to the end of a novel simply takes remembering that the world is more complicated than we know, and then sticking some of those complications into the story.

Fun fact: there are also 3,000 varieties of pears. That's right. Even PEARS are more complicated than you thought!

Maybe that was why she was helping Madeleine. She was a manipulative bitch, but Dess couldn't imagine living in any other reality than the one those manipulations had created. In a way, Dess owed the old mindcaster something. Like her life, such as it was.

life is problematic, so novels must be too.

I think we all have light and dark inside us.

They're so attached to their patterns that they've forgotten rule number one of human behavior: there are no patterns. People just do things. There's no such things as a coherent and fully integrated human personality, let alone consistent motivation.

complication …. In that particular foggy business, I couldn't at this moment make out the wood for the trees, but one thing seemed fairly certain: this was

Nothing should ever really surprise us because people are like icebergs, you only see the little bit on the top.

Edward Crosby Johnson II, who in the 1950s established Fidelity as a dominant investment firm and made the same point in his own way: "The market is like a beautiful woman—endlessly fascinating, endlessly complex, always changing, always mystifying. I have been absorbed and immersed since 1924 and I know this is no science. It is an art…. It is personal intuition.

As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.

If it wasn't a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn't be worth much.

1. Providing a unique interface between members of the organization 2. Delivering unique creativity 3. Managing a situation or organization of great complexity 4. Leading customers 5. Inspiring staff 6. Providing deep domain knowledge 7. Possessing a unique talent

So here we are. We live in a world where we have the

The driving force that gets people to pay a specialist is that their disease is unpredictable or hard to diagnose. The reason we're here is to solve the hard problems.

Diversity might involve ethnicity or physical abilities. But it's just as likely to involve idiosyncratic approaches and differences in experience. If enough peculiar people get together, something new is going to happen. Author Scott Page has shown that as systems get more complex, diversity creates ever more benefits.

For the important work, the instructions are always insufficient.

A classical computation is like a solo voice—one line of pure tones succeeding each other. A quantum computation is like a symphony—many lines of tones interfering with one another.

philosopher Archie Bahm: "Nature can never be completely described, for such a description of nature would have to duplicate nature." That is, a perfect description of the universe is indistinguishable from the universe itself.

Entropy is the information contained in a physical system that is invisible to us.

I was sitting in the backseat with my brother, Luke, a seven-year-old complexity. Sometimes he acted as if he were two, and sometimes twelve. He was full of questions and energy and opinions except when you wanted him to have any of those things.

Sharon Moalem