Complexity Quotes - Page 14

• From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our outward needs.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Simple, Simplicity, Needs

  Jiddu Krishnamurti, Susunaga Weeraperuma (1996). “Sayings of J. Krishnamurti”, p.181, Motilal Banarsidass Publ.

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• But what we can never do is change the story that has made us what we are. It's a story completely dictated by the accumulation of life's manifold complexities—its capacity for astonishment and horror, for sanguinity and hopelessness, for pellucid light and the most profound darkness. We are what has happened to us.

  Douglas Kennedy

  Light, Profound, Darkness

  "The Moment: A Novel".

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• He stared up at the stars: and it seemed to him then that they were dancers, stately and graceful, performing a dance almost infinite in its complexity.

  Neil Gaiman

  Stars, Dancer, Infinite

  Neil Gaiman (2007). “Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess's Stardust: Being a Romance Within the Realms of Faerie”, Vertigo

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• Our culture thrives on black-and-white narratives, clearly defined emotions, easy endings, and so, this thrust into complexity exhausts.

  Caroline Knapp

  Black And White, Culture, Narrative

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• With genetic engineering, we will be able to increase the complexity of our DNA, and improve the human race. But it will be a slow process, because one will have to wait about 18 years to see the effect of changes to the genetic code.

  Stephen Hawking

  Race, Dna, Engineering

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• We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.

  Mohsin Hamid

  Self, Humanity, Brain

  Mohsin Hamid (2015). “Discontent and its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London”, p.62, Penguin

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• I have a theory that kitchens, once they reach a certain level of complexity, attract new gadgets into their orbit, like planets. Only this can account for the fact that I own two melon ballers.

  Kerry Greenwood

  Two, Kitchen, Orbit

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• So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we're adding to the database that scholars can then draw from to generalize about the complexity of the American experience. And that's the contribution that family trees make to broader scholarship.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Tree, Doe, Legends

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• ASTONISHING, said Death. REALLY ASTONISHING. LET ME PUT FORWARD ANOTHER SUGGESTION: THAT YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A LUCKY SPECIES OF APE THAT IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CREATION VIA A LANGUAGE THAT EVOLVED IN ORDER TO TELL ONE ANOTHER WHERE THE RIPE FRUIT WAS.

  Terry Pratchett

  Order, Trying, Suggestions

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• One person looks around and sees a universe created by a god who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no great difference between one another, for neither set of beliefs make us kinder or wiser.

  Mark Haddon

  Prayer, Believe, Fall

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• I was a terrible believer in things,but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn't know where to put my faith,or if there was such a place,or even what the word faith meant, in all of it's complexity. Everything seemed to be possibly potent and possibly fake.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Fake, Terrible, Skeptical

  Cheryl Strayed (2012). “Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found”, p.120, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I would be ok if I found out for sure that if I am in any way superior to a wolf it is simply in virtue of my brain's higher capacity and complexity. A large difference - my cerebral equipment allows me to have such diverse concepts as "hope", "funky", "England", "multiplication", "three strikes" and "the categorical imperative" - but a difference in degree. Wolves, of course, are superior to me with regards to smelling, hearing, and running, and are generally superior to humans in that they don't kill each other.

  Nomy Arpaly

  Running, Virtue, Funky

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hardworking artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life's task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?

  Thomas Mann

  Lying, Artist, Simple

  "Death in Venice". Book by Thomas Mann, translated by David Luke. Chapter 3, 1912.

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• Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life.

  W. G. Sebald

  Mean, Reality, Understanding

  W. G. Sebald (2016). “The Rings of Saturn”, p.106, New Directions Publishing

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• Women face a lot of challenges every day - we have to stand firm in our walk and our intentions - but there are times when that weight feels too heavy, feels like a load that I just can't bear that day. I try to work through that in my art, whatever medium that might be. My live performance is based around the color red, and all the things that communicates as a woman to the world - fiery, really vocal, present, almost a kind of stubborn color - and redefining it as being very complex. Being able to express that complexity, I'm getting a lot better at that the older I've gotten.

  Solange Knowles

  Art, Challenges, Trying

  Source: www.cosmopolitan.com

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• The one thing that's missing from the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, and I don't imagine we'll see it any time soon, is that there's no memorial to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died because of how the memory of 9/11 was used. Memory is a very interesting thing. We very selectively curate our story and then stop when it begins to tell other people's stories and forces us to accept some kind of culpability. One reason I write is that there's not enough Muslims writing, Pakistanis writing, not enough people of faith writing about the complexities of our experiences.

  Haroon Moghul

  Memories, Writing, People

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity.

  Patti Smith

  Spiritual, Fall, Son

  Patti Smith (2010). “Just Kids”, p.245, A&C Black

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• Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society.

  Alfred Austin

  Mistake, Garden, Society

  Alfred Austin (1894). “The Garden that I Love”

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• Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever.

  Donald Miller

  Christian, Heart, Ideas

  Donald Miller (2007). “Miller 3-in-1: Blue Like Jazz, Through Painted Deserts, Searching for God”, p.117, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• It {Darwin's theory of evolution] was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

  Douglas Adams

  Religious, Silly, Ignorance

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• The complexity embedded in the different levels of meaning that go along with the words "I love you" ought to be a whole mindfuck of a video game

  Rachel Cohn

  Love You, Games, Different

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2014). “Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List”, p.9, Egmont UK

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• We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Wise, Believe, People

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• That [American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Issues, People, Anxiety

  "Spokespersons of US Right 'In Most Cases Stunningly Ignorant'". Interview with Gregor Peter Schmitz, www.spiegel.de. December 6, 2010.

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• In 2008 we suffered an economic catastrophe, and the rules of the game fundamentally changed forever. A few years ago, you might hear a leader talking about doing things "the way we've always done it." No more. Today, nearly every industry is in the midst of massive upheaval. Today, we live in a world of dizzying speed, exponential complexity, and ruthless competition. Leaders today realize they need to innovate, and their chief concerns now focus on fostering creative and innovation within their organizations.

  Josh Linkner

  Leader, Forever, Focus

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• Once upon a time fairy tales were told to audiences of young and old alike. It is only in the last century that such tales were deemed fit only for small children, stripped of much of their original complexity, sensuality, and power to frighten and delight.

  Terri Windling

  Children, Once Upon A Time, Delight

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