Quotes About Complexity

We have a picture for how complexity arises, because if the universe is computationally capable, maybe we shouldn't be so surprised that things are so entirely out of control.

Anyone who wants simple, pat stories should buy another author's product. The real universe ain't that way, and neither are my fictive ones.

Philosophically, the universe has really never made things in ones. The Earth is special and everything else is different? No, we've got seven other planets. The sun? No, the sun is one of those dots in the night sky. The Milky Way? No, it's one of a hundred billion galaxies. And the universe - maybe it's countless other universes.

To the extent that we even understand string theory, it may imply a massive number of possible different universes with different laws of physics in each universe, and there may be no way of distinguishing between them or saying why the laws of physics are the way they are. And if I can predict anything, then I haven't explained anything.

I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.

The trouble is the field of science, medicine, universities, biotech companies - you name it - have been so splintered, layers, sub-divided, hacked that people can spend their entire career studying one tiny little cog of life.

It is of course true that many of our universities are large and complex organisations, requiring highly skilled individuals to run them effectively.

A university anywhere can aim no higher than to be as British as possible for the sake of the undergraduates, as German as possible for the sake of the public at large-and as confused as possible for the preservation of the whole uneasy balance.

UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.

People remain unknowable to us, even people that we're very close to. And I think the same goes for our own selves.

I'm interested in the murky areas where there are no clear answers - or sometimes multiple answers. It's here that I try to imagine patterns or codes to make sense of the unknowns that keep us up at night. I'm also interested in the invisible space between people in communication; the space guided by translation and misinterpretation.

Muddle is the extra unknown personality in any committee.

There's always the risk that there are unknown unknowns.

The scourge of unlawful robocalls is technically complex to address, and no single action will get the job done.

You're not free unless you can show the good and the bad, all sides of them. So to me, when I play a character, it's important that I can show every aspect of them.

Secretly we're all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

The deep sea can be fathomed, but who knows the heart of a woman?

It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.

Women, they are mysterious creatures!

Women are complicated. We all know that.

Women often seemed to leave things unsaid, and in his limited experience it was what they did not say that proved the most trouble.

Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves. But it's like electricity: you don't need to know how it works to get a shock on the fingers.

I think at this stage in my life I have learned that there are any number of things that men will never know, and can never hope to know, about women.

... there are four women in every man's heart. The Maid in the Meadow, the Demon Lover, the Stouthearted Woman, the Tall and Quiet Woman.