Quotes About Complexity

Too many people hold a very narrow view of what motivates us. They believe that the only way to get us moving is with the jab of a stick or the promise of a carrot. But if you look at over 50 years of research on motivation, or simply scrutinize your own behavior, it's pretty clear human beings are more complicated than that.

In terms of the actual curriculum for management education, my own view is very simple-minded: The world is incredibly complex, it changes all the time, and we should not even hope that we could create a general model that accurately describes the world in all its possible states.

I think from a personal standpoint, maybe I appreciate a little more that there are two sides to every story, and the way that the U.S. is sometimes is viewed outside of the U.S. can be pretty tough, depending on what the U.S.'s actions are.

Viewed as a geometric figure, the ant's path is irregular, complex, and hard to describe.

My dear…" he said almost tenderly, "you haven't begun to learn the worst of me.

He loved numbers, their patterns and secrets, the way something complex could be reduced to something simple. In mathematics, unlike life, there was always a solution, a definite answer.

Theirs had been a complex relationship, two people who had been bound by disappointments and resentments the way others were bound by love. Helen

You're very good at organizing your feelings, aren't you?" Christopher had asked dryly. "I suppose I am. I wish I could organize yours. At present they seem to resemble an overturned drawer of neckcloths." "Not neckcloths," he said. "Flatware, with sharp edges." Audrey had smiled. "I pity those who find themselves in the way of your feelings.

Amanda Briars was a beautiful woman masquerading as a plain one…she was funny, intelligent, brave, practical, and, most of all, interesting.

A woman will always surprise you with what she's capable of. You can spend a lifetime trying to discover what excites and interests her, but you'll never know it all. There's always more. Every woman is a mystery, not to be understood but enjoyed.

he doesn't prefer your kind. There are men with certain appetites that can be fulfilled only by very skilled women, and you...' She paused and viewed Madeline critically. 'Something tells me that your repertoire is extremely limited.' 'I don't even have a repertoire,' Madeline said gloomily.

Not for the first time, Tom reflected there was no understanding women. It wasn't that they were illogical. Just the opposite. Their logic was of a higher order, too complex and advanced to submit to a complete proof calculus. Women assigned mysterious values to details a man would overlook, and were able to draw piercing conclusions about his innermost secrets.

Hardy would never be the easiest man to have a relationship with. He was complex and strong-willed and rough-edged. But I loved those qualities about him. I was more than willing to take him exactly as he was. And it didn't hurt that he seemed equally game to take me on my own terms.

It was finally becoming clear to her that love wasn't about finding someone perfect to marry. Love was about seeing through to the truth of a person, and accepting all their shades of light and dark. Love was an ability. And Harry had it in abundance, even if he wasn't ready to come to terms with it yet.

Merripen was more complicated than most people realized. Although he gave the impression of being less sensitive than most men, the truth was, he harbored such powerful feelings that even he wasn't able to manage them well.

There's so much gray to every story—nothing is so black and white.

it is necessary to act within but to think beyond our received humanist tradition and, all the while, to imagine a much more complicated set of stories about the emergence of the now, in which what is foreclosed as unknowable is forever saturating the "what-can-be-known." We are left with the project of visualizing, mourning, and thinking "other humanities" within this received genealogy of "the human.

I was recently cautioned about some 'difficult' characters in a work-in-progress, and I was surprised at first to hear them labeled as such. On second glance, there was nothing more difficult about them than anyone I know. But in a book you are privy to an interior world which exposes the uglier parts that in life we get to hide. Arguably, all characters should be somewhat unlikable.

There are two kinds of womanizers. Those who love women too much and those who hate them.

They had a fabulous sex life. Drake was an attentive, tender lover who took his time in pleasing her. But every once in a while something in him changed and she caught a glimpse of the truly dangerous man he really was. She hadn't tamed him, not one bit. He just chose to show her a tender side he said he'd only discovered with her. But sometimes the tiger in him growled and clawed its way to the surface. And then the sex was incandescent.

My second concern about Occam's Razor is just a matter of fact. The world is more complicated than any of us would have been likely to conceive. Some particles and properties don't seem necessary to any physical processes that matter—at least according to what we've deduced so far. Yet they exist. Sometimes the simplest model just isn't the correct one.

I try to fight what I am feeling but his words play in my head. Anytime soon. Eventually he will leave. We need each other right now, I tell myself, two broken people who have connected in the depths of all our fucked-upness. I wonder why it feels that it isn't enough when only days ago it was exactly what I wanted.

My favorite, and all macho alpha men like you have a secret softer side and a sweet tooth. It's part of the breed.

Oh, please. You have so many rules, your rules have rules. Any woman who dared to date you would need an encyclopedia-sized book to keep up.