Quotes About Complexity

There were long stretches of DNA in between genes that didn't seem to be doing very much; some even referred to these as "junk DNA," though a certain amount of hubris was required for anyone to call any part of the genome "junk," given our level of ignorance.

Eso fue el románico: una gracia que se evitaba a sí misma.

Las mujeres, el alcohol, la soledad. Quizá sean éstas las tres claves que lo explican todo y no explican nada.

We are very far from always knowing our own wishes.

But the reasons why Hector was unhappy were quite complex. He didn't really want to think about it, perhaps because those reasons weren't so easy to accept. It even made him feel a little afraid. He knew this fear too well, it was what stopped his patients from being able to really think about their problems, and it was his job to help them overcome this fear and understand what was happening to them.

The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person.

faith is complex and has experiential, practical, and rational dimensions. None of these can be completely neglected in any form of theological discourse.83

What are you like inside? Don't you have feelings where you love everyone, and at the same time you hate everyone? Or—don't you have times when everything goes the way you want, but nothing feels good or right? That's what I mean," he'd say, "about my black horse and my white horse.

Truth is subject to too much analysis.

People are mysterious, even to themselves.

If you don't understand it right away, don't worry, you're in good company. Many fund managers and corporate CEOs had only a limited understanding of the bond and derivatives markets until very recently. Even President Clinton reportedly admitted surprise when he discovered the importance of—in his words, according to one source—a bunch of "fucking bond traders.

You will always be more than one person. You will always embody contradiction.

But what if absolute consistency on any issue from the left or the right, religious or secular, is an indication of mediocre intelligence and a lack of intellectual honesty? What if the world is a complex place? What if leadership requires flexibility? What if ideology is a bad substitute for common sense? What if ideological consistency, let alone "purity," is a sign of small-mindedness, maybe even stupidity? Logically

I began to sense the depth of my ignorance about the country I was talking about. On the road, I'd be parroting the party line, saying that America was godless and doomed. But the America I was actually experiencing (for the first time as a resident) was not doomed. It was more complicated and wonderful than I had ever imagined.

Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is.

fundamentalist attempts to describe it are self-defeating. Trying to nail down theological

I don't view you as a market segment. I view you as my partner, an individual reader, a friend as complex and maybe even as conflicted, as I am. Why should either of us "fit" anywhere?

People are not as one-dimensional as the stories about them.

I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not. I'm very fond of women I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them.

You may be a puzzle, but I like the way the parts fit.

Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to a story than both sides.

Instinctively we recognized a deeper need—the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered.

Modern civilization has become so complex and the lives of civilized men so interwoven with the lives of other men in other countries as to make it impossible to be in this world and not of it.

One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.