Complexity Quotes - Page 20

• I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity; in clarity, in efficiency. True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It's about bringing order to complexity.

  Jonathan Ive

  Philosophical, Thinking, Order

  iOS 7 product video, shown at WWDC, 2013.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• One can truly say that the irresistible progress of natural science since the time of Galileo has made its first halt before the study of the higher parts of the brain, the organ of the most complicated relations of the animal to the external world. And it seems, and not without reason, that now is the really critical moment for natural science; for the brain, in its highest complexity-the human brain-which created and creates natural science, itself becomes the object of this science.

  Ivan Pavlov

  Science, Animal, Brain

  7 Copy quote

• The earliest signs of living things, announcing as they do a high complexity of organization, entirely exclude the hypothesis of a transmutation from lower to higher grades of being. The first fiat of Creation which went forth, doubtlessly ensured the perfect adaptation of animals to the surrounding media; and thus, whilst the geologist recognizes a beginning, he can see in the innumerable facts of the eye of the earliest crustacean, the same evidences of Omniscience as in the completion of the vertebrate form.

  Roderick Murchison

  Eye, Science, Animal

  Roderick Impey Murchison (1854). “Siluria the History of the Oldest Known Rocks Containing Organic Remains, with a Brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold Over the Earth by Roderick Impey Murchison”, p.469

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nature is capable of building complex structures by processes of self-organization; simplicity begets complexity.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Self, Organization, Simplicity

  Victor J. Stenger (2010). “God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist”, p.132, Prometheus Books

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• To be a student required a peculiar kind of capitulation, a willingness not simply to do as one is told, but to surrendor the movements of one's soul to the unknown complexities of another's. A willingness, not simply to be moved, but to be remade.

  R. Scott Bakker

  Soul, Peculiar, Movement

  R. Scott Bakker (2010). “The Judging Eye: One (The Aspect-Emperor Trilogy)”, p.257, The Overlook Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fact that all normal children acquire essentially comparable grammars of great complexity with remarkable rapidity suggests that human beings are somehow specially designed to do this, with data-handling or 'hypothesis-formulating' ability of unknown character and complexity.

  Noam Chomsky

  Children, Character, Data

  Andrea Moro, Noam Chomsky, Ivano Caponigro, Daniel B. Kane (2015). “The Boundaries of Babel: The Brain and the Enigma of Impossible Languages”, p.37, MIT Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Major Trends [is] the canonical modern work on the nature and history of Jewish mysticism. For a sophisticated understanding, not only of the dynamics of Jewish mysticism, but of the exquisite complexities of Jewish history and tradition, Major Trends is a major port of entry through which one must pass.

  Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi

  Understanding, Trends, Dynamics

  5 Copy quote

• Business is full of complexities. That's what makes it so interesting. Anyone who thinks it's boring hasn't given it much thought.

  Donald Trump

  Thinking, Interesting, Bored

  4 Copy quote

• A liberal education will impart an awareness of the amazing and precious complexity of human relationships. Since those relationships are violated more often out of insensitiveness than out of deliberate intent, whatever increases sensitiveness of perception and understanding humanizes life.

  Sidney Hook

  Understanding, Perception, Awareness

  8 Copy quote

• We humans are a complex interwoven system of the body, the mind, and the spirit. We are formed and informed by the interplay of these systems. Our health care, to be truly effective, must acknowledge and address this complexity and interconnectedness – and also the effect we have on each other.

  Ann Scott

  Mind, Body, Care

  4 Copy quote

• In private many scientists admit that science has no explanation for the beginning of life... Darwin never imagined the exquisitely profound complexity that exists even at the most basic levels of life.

  Michael Behe

  Profound, Levels, Scientist

  "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution". Book by Michael Behe, 1996.

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• Before my father would open up a karate school in a particular neighborhood, he'd clean up the block - kick all the drug dealers and gang bangers off the block. My father was very clear: 'I've got guns too, and I'll kill you just as much as a rival gang would.' And he meant it. He was a man of many facets and complexities.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Father, Block, School

  8 Copy quote

• The depth of any story is proportionate to the protagonist's commitment to their goal, the complexity of the problem, and the grace of the solution.

  Steve House

  Commitment, Goal, Grace

  16 Copy quote

• I'm using the afterlife as a backdrop against which to explore the joys and complexities of being human - it turns out that it's a great lens with which to understand what matters to us.

  David Eagleman

  Afterlife, What Matters, Joy

  "David Eagleman: 'We won't die - our consciousness will live forever on the internet'". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. April 3, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Strategic thinkers were naturally rattled to find this outsider fooling around with their work. They had been thinking strategically when Reagan was just another movie actor playing opposite a chimpanzee, for heaven's sake. They think Reagan is too naive, too innocent, to grasp the intellectual complexities of cold war strategy.

  Russell Baker

  War, Thinking, Opposites

  4 Copy quote

• I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

  Brian Eno

  Song, Paper, Structure

  7 Copy quote

• The charnel ground is that great graveyard in which the complexities of samsara and nirvana lie buried.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Life, Nature, Lying

  4 Copy quote

• Complexity is not a cause of confusion. It is a result of it.

  Jeff Hawkins

  Confusion, Understanding, Confusing

  5 Copy quote

• We regard as 'scientific' a method based on deep analysis of facts, theories, and views, presupposing unprejudiced, unfearing open discussion and conclusions. The complexity and diversity of all the phenomena of modern life, the great possibilities and dangers linked with the scientific-technical revolution and with a number of social tendencies demand precisely such an approach, as has been acknowledged in a number of official statements.

  Andrei Sakharov

  Science, Views, Numbers

  Andrei D. Sakharov (1968). “Progress, coexistence, and intellectual freedom”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing can be created out of nothing.

  Lucretius

  Preparation

  De Rerum Natura bk. 1, l. 155

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Dogen's writing, the practical instruction, philosophy and poetry are together in one voice. People hear about his poetry, go to his work, and expect to find poetry, or they hear about his philosophy and expect to find philosophy. They look just for practical instruction and find poetry and philosophy. They can't make out the complexity of his writing, become frustrated and let him go.

  Kazuaki Tanahashi

  Philosophy, Writing, Voice

  Source: blogs.sfzc.org

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• In times like ours, where the growing complexity of life leaves us barely the time to read the newspapers, where the map of Europehas endured profound rearrangements and is perhaps on the brink of enduring yet others, where so many threatening and new problems appear everywhere, you will admit it may be demanded of a writer that he be more than a fine wit who makes us forget in idle and byzantine discussions on the merits of pure form.

  Marcel Proust

  Art, Profound, Byzantine

  46 Copy quote

• I love women because of their spirit, courage, and the things they go through in the process of family and life and then all the complexities and now the careers of the family and life and the whole thing. But I feel badly for our men in all of our traditions.

  Maya Tiwari

  Men, Careers, Spirit

  Source: www.abc.net.au

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man's complexity and the strength and decency of his longings.

  John Cheever

  Men, Records, Longing

  John Cheever (1965). “The Wapshot chronicle”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• By "essence" I understand a universal, of any degree of complexity and definition, which may be given immediately, whether to sense or to thought.... This object of pure sense or pure thought, with no belief superadded, an object inwardly complete and individual, but without external relations or physical status, is what I call an essence.

  George Santayana

  Essence, Degrees, May

  4 Copy quote