Quotes About Complexity

Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice.

When I'm asked for the 'elevator speech' that sums up my work, I always respond, 'I always take the stairs, so I don't have an elevator speech. If you'd like to walk with me awhile, I'd love to talk.' I don't know of a life worth living or work worth doing that can be reduced to a sound bite." (40)

How, exactly, do we resolve dilemmas that tempt us to choose either this or that and instead hold the tension long enough to let a "third thing" emerge?

First, the subjects we teach are as large and complex as life so our knowledge of them is always flawed and partial. No matter how we devote ourselves to reading and research, teaching requires a command of content that always eludes our grasp. Second, the students we teach are larger than life and even more complex. To see them clearly and see them whole and respond to them wisely in the moment requires a fusion of Freud and Solomon that few of us achieve.

Perhaps there is a lesson here about the complexity, even duplicity, we must embrace on the road to vocation, where we sometimes find ourselves needing to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

Paradoxical thinking requires that we embrace a view of the world in which opposites are joined, so that we can see the world clearly and see it whole...The result is a world more complex and confusing than the one made simple by either-or thought - but that simplicity is merely the dullness of death. When we think together we reclaim the life force in the world, in our students, in ourselves.

Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe. -Super man

Il n'y avait que dans ses compositions qu'on découvrait la complexité et la délicatesse du monde qui était caché sous ce visage et derrière les gestes rares et rigides.

the theorem of incompleteness . . . [shows] there is nothing on this level of existence that can fully explain this level of existence.

You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.

No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into its system of laws.

We talked about each story for a while, and then Verla talked about heroes and villains. 'Nobody is all good or all bad,' she told us. 'The world is painted in shades of gray.

Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.

There are no simple words. I don't know why I thought I could hide anything behind language.

All I wanted, even when I hated you most, was some poor, barren, parched excuse to love you. But you only gave me riddles.

That the mental experiences of dogs aren't as complex as ours is no reason to dismiss those experiences altogether.

Intelligent men are dangerous.

It was complicated. I understood it, mostly, but I had to think a little sideways to do it.

Chaos is not predictable. To imagine anything else would be dangerous.

Many, if not most, of the best and most lasting children's books have multiple levels, some of which are not fully accessible to their most likely readers…at least, not on their first read-through at age eight or ten or fifteen.

But sometimes, I hate myself for hating him. Simply because he is an ordinary boy.

Didn't say it was easy. Said it was simple. Some of the simplest things aren't easy at all.

Travis would always be a nice man with a shallow character. On the other hand, Cade's character was as deep and dangerous as a river's currents. She

to answer . . . is, 'What does a woman want?' Sigmund