Complexes Quotes - Page 3

People are so complex and multidimensional that raising someone to 'hero' status is too great a simplification.

Dalia Mogahed

Hero, People, Simplification

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The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth.

Slavoj Žižek

Clouds, Iceland, Eruption

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A Wedding In Haiti is a great experience and its unaffected prose is as true a portrait of complex Haiti as you will find.

Mark Kurlansky

Portraits, Haiti, Great Experiences

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We live in a very complex world.

Vinton Cerf

World

"Vint Cerf: Concerns over packets and politics". Interview with John Blau, www.infoworld.com. October 25, 2004.

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When a young man, I read somewhere the following: God the Almighty said, 'All that is too complex is unnecessary, and it is simple that is needed.' So this has been my lifetime motto – I have been creating weapons to defend the borders of my fatherland, to be simple and reliable.

Mikhail Kalashnikov

Simple, Men, Ak 47

"Kalashnikov, 90, decries 'criminal' use of rifle" by Dmitry Solovyov and Michael Roddy, www.reuters.com. October 26, 2009.

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I also wanted to do something that I hadn't really seen in almost any black novels, which was a complex love story in which both people were extremely intelligent and talented and understood a lot of things and were still at odds getting it together.

Stanley Crouch

Intelligent, Odds, People

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What makes something simple or complex? It's not the number of dials or controls or how many features it has: It is whether the person using the device has a good conceptual model of how it operates.

Donald A. Norman

Simple, Numbers, Devices

Donald A. Norman (2010). “Living with Complexity”, p.40, MIT Press

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One can't say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to produce events in pairs and lean them against each other like cards. I suppose if you a playing go or shogi, then such a thing might be helpful, but that is not life.

Jesse Ball

Might, Pairs, Events

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The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life; it’s so easy to make it complex.

Yvon Chouinard

World, Easy, Simplify

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An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life.

William Kingdon Clifford

Struggle, Atmosphere, Belief

William Kingdon Clifford, Leslie Stephen, Frederick Pollock (2011). “Lectures and Essays”, p.199, Cambridge University Press

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It's easy to assume people are conforming when we witness them all choosing the same option, but when we choose that very option ourselves, we have no shortage of perfectly good reasons for why we just happen to be doing the same thing as those other people; they mindlessly conform, but we mindfully choose. This doesn't mean that we're all conformists in denial. It means that we regularly fail to recognize that others' thoughts and behaviors are just as complex and varied as our own. Rather than being alone in a crowd of sheep, we're all individuals in sheep's clothing.

Sheena Iyengar

Mean, Perfectly Good, Sheep

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My mind leaps to my theory about presidents - that there are two kinds, ones who have a lot of sex and the others who start wars. In short - and don't quote me, because this is an incomplete expression of a more complex premise - I believe blow jobs prevent war.

A.M. Homes

Jobs, Sex, War

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At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the clock chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern.
After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the clouds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes.
By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.

Erin Morgenstern

Dream, Numbers, Clouds

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Object-oriented programming as it emerged in Simula 67 allows software structure to be based on real-world structures, and gives programmers a powerful way to simplify the design and construction of complex programs.

David Gelernter

Powerful, Real, Learning

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In the development of the understanding of complex phenomena, the most powerful tool available to the human intellect is abstraction. Abstraction arises from the recognition of similarities between certain objects, situations, or processes in the real world and the decision to concentrate on these similarities and to ignore, for the time being, their differences.

Tony Hoare

Powerful, Real, Learning

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What is the central core of the subject [computer science]? What is it that distinguishes it from the separate subjects with which it is related? What is the linking thread which gathers these disparate branches into a single discipline. My answer to these questions is simple -it is the art of programming a computer. It is the art of designing efficient and elegant methods of getting a computer to solve problems, theoretical or practical, small or large, simple or complex. It is the art of translating this design into an effective and accurate computer program.

Tony Hoare

Art, Learning, Simple

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When building a complex system, having crackerjack programmers (who can make any design work, even a bad one) can be a liability. The result, after lots of effort, is a working system that cannot be easily maintained or upgraded. Good -but not great- programmers would fail early, causing a realization that the system must be redesigned, and then reimplemented. The extra cost is paid once, early in the system's cycle (when it is cheap), instead of repeatedly paid late in the system's cycle (when it is more expensive).

Richard E. Pattis

Learning, Design Work, Effort

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Complexity has and will maintain a strong fascination for many people. It is true that we live in a complex world and strive to solve inherently complex problems, which often do require complex mechanisms. However, this should not diminish our desire for elegant solutions, which convince by their clarity and effectiveness. Simple, elegant solutions are more effective, but they are harder to find than complex ones, and they require more time, which we too often believe to be unaffordable

Niklaus Wirth

Strong, Believe, Learning

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On the other hand, ethnic psychology must always come to the assistance of individual psychology, when the developmental forms of the complex mental processes are in question.

Wilhelm Wundt

Hands, Psychology, Individual

Wilhelm Max Wundt (1969). “Principles of Physiological Psychology”

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The dog [in Pavlov's experiments] does not continue to salivate whenever it hears a bell unless sometimes at least an edible offering accompanies the bell. But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system. An experience associated only once with a bereavement, an accident, or a battle, may become the center of a permanent phobia or complex, not in the least dependent on a recurrence of the original shock.

Gordon Allport

Dog, Offering, Long

"A Psychological Interpretation". Book by Gordon Allport, p. 199, 1938.

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The results of ethnic psychology constitute, at the same time, our chief source of information regarding the general psychology of the complex mental processes.

Wilhelm Wundt

Time, Psychology, Information

Wilhelm Max Wundt (1969). “Principles of Physiological Psychology”

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Simplicity is not about making something without ornament, but rather about making something very complex, then slicing elements away, until you reveal the very essence.

Christoph Niemann

Essence, Simplicity, Design

"The Story of My App" by Christoph Niemann, www.newyorker.com. March 18, 2013.

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A wonderful discovery, psychoanalysis. Makes quite simple people feel they're complex.

S. N. Behrman

Simple, Discovery, People

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There are a lot of parallels between what we're doing and an expensive watch. It's very complex, has a lot of parts and it only has value when it's predictable and reliable.

Gordon Bethune

Watches, Aviation, Airline

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When a man in the process of dreaming becomes conscious that he is dreaming, he is no longer identified with the phenomena; he is not affected exultantly or dolefully. God consciously dreams His cosmic play and is unaffected by it's dualities. A yogi who perceives his real self as separate from his active senses and their objects never becomes attached to anything. He is aware of the dream nature of the universe and watches it without being entangled in its complex but ephemeral nature.

Paramahansa Yogananda

Dream, Real, Men

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