Quotes About Complexity

there isn't a full consensus among experts. But strip away a few more skins from the onion of time and, by 3,400 million years ago

A cell can also look static under a microscope, yet its state is the product of more than a billion metabolic reactions every second.11 You are composed of at least thirty trillion cells, so in the last second your tranquil demeanour was sustained by an incomprehensible one hundred billion trillion reactions (1023, or 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). I'm now in my mid-fifties, so my wrinkles and aches and pains are the product of about 1032 reactions to date, roughly a billion times

Geochemistry gives rise seamlessly to biochemistry.

this chapter is different from the other chapters in this book, in that not only does science not (yet) know the answer, but at present we can barely conceive of how that answer might look in terms of the known laws of physics or biology or information.

multicellular life. All animals, all plants, all of them depend on

Beauty is not always as perfect as we imagine it to be, but it can be damn close if we learn to accept the scary parts or the ugly parts.

En todas las cosas humanas, cuando se examinan de cerca, se demuestra que no pueden apartarse los obstáculos sin que de ellos surjan otros.

You will start a band. You will start a magazine. You will start a family. You will finish nothing.

Some people, like your sister, just get happier and happier everyday. And some people, like Baba Asch, just get sadder and sadder. And some people, like you, get both.' 'What about you? Are you the happiest and the saddest right now than you've ever been?' 'Of course I am.' 'Why?' 'Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.

Later - when things happened that they could never have imagined - she wrote him a letter that said: When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?

Quand apprendras-tu qu'il n'existe pas un mot pour chaque chose ?

Picasso (full name Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso)

Of all the endless variety of phenomena which nature presents to our senses, there is none that fills our mind with greater wonder than that inconceivably complex movement which … we designate as human life. Its mysterious origin is veiled in the forever impenetrable mist of the past, its character is rendered incomprehensible by its in

Our bodies are of such complexity of structure, the motions we perform are so numerous and involved, and the external impressions on our sense organs to such a degree delicate and elusive that it is hard for the average person to grasp this fact.

What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.

Only one woman exists in this world, one woman with countless faces.

Cine oare a creat acest labirint al nesigurantei, acest templu al trufiei, acest ulcior cu pacate, acest ogor semanat cu mii de viclesuguri, aceasta poarta a iadului, acest cos plin pana la refuz de siretlicuri, aceasta otrava care aduce cu mierea: femeia?

HERE LIES A GREEK WHO HATES THE GREEKS.

Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.

Men were sometimes comforters and often brutes but they were always puzzles

He remembered Barber when he was gentle and when he was not; his tender pleasure at preparing and sharing food, and his selfishness; his patience in instruction, and his cruelty; his raunchiness, and his sober advice; his laughter, and his rages; his warm spirit, and his drunkenness.

You don't get to be a respected intellectual by uttering truisms in monosyllables.

The world is a very puzzling place. If you're not willing to be puzzled, you just become a replica of someone else's mind.

The last paradox is that the tale of Palestine from the beginning until today is a simple story of colonialism and dispossession, yet the world treats it as a multifaceted and complex story—hard to understand and even harder to solve.