Complexity Quotes - Page 30

• Biodiversity is the greatest treasure we have... Its diminishment is to be prevented at all cost.

  Thomas Eisner

  Greatest Treasure, Cost, Biodiversity

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• Civilization has ceased to be that delicate flower which was preserved and painstakingly cultivated in one or two sheltered areas of a soil rich in wild species ... Mankind has opted for monoculture; it is in the process of creating a mass civilization, as beetroot is grown in the mass. Henceforth, man's daily bill of fare will consist only of this one item.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Flower, Men, Two

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.44, Penguin

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• Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge. Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all.

  Winston Churchill

  Writing, Simplicity, Language

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• In contrast to the written account-which, depending on its complexity of thought, reference, and vocabulary, is pitched at a larger or smaller readership-a photograph has only one language and is destined potentially for all.

  Susan Sontag

  Photography, Vocabulary, Language

  Susan Sontag (2013). “Regarding the Pain of Others”, p.20, Macmillan

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• The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This idea has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden - as an unpatriotic act - that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood

  James A. Baldwin

  Black And White, Boys, Cowboy

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• Tens of billions ... are going into the pockets of tens of thousands of tax preparers who ... love complexity as much as the rest of us hate it

  Nicholas von Hoffman

  Hate, Pockets, Taxation

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• Given the complexity of interpersonal relationships and institutions and the complexity of co-ordination of the actions of many people, it is enormously unlikely that, even if there were one ideal pattern for society, it could be arrived at in an a priori fashion. And even supposing that some great genius did come along with a blueprint, who could have the confidence that it could work

  Robert Nozick

  Fashion, Supposing That, People

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• We are talking about an awesome power. It is the power to weave illusions that appear real as long as they last. That is the very core of the Fed's power. Of course not everyone is instinctively against this illusion-weaving power, and many even welcome it. Tragically, the innocent who understand little about the complexity of the monetary system suffer the most, while those who are in the know reap great profit whether the market is going up or down.

  Ron Paul

  Money, Real, Power

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• The glory of sport is born at the moment when the game and the person become one, when all the complexity of one's life finds a moment to emerge in the game.

  Timothy Shriver

  Success, Sports, Athlete

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• The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Money, Simple, Mind

  "Money: Whence it came, where it went". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith, pp. 15, 29, 1975.

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• How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.

  Alexander Smith

  Heart, Garden, Desire

  Alexander Smith (2012). “Dreamthorp A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.223, tredition

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• Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Language, Said, Irrational

  Robert A. Heinlein (2014). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.227, Hachette UK

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• The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Doubt, Overcoming

  Joyce Carol Oates (2007). “The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982”, Ecco

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• There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet

  Adrienne Rich

  Unseen, Looks, Patterns

  Adrienne Rich (2002). “Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company

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• There is no 'the truth,' 'a truth'--truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity.

  Adrienne Rich

  Truth Is, One Thing

  Adrienne Rich (2002). “Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company

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• All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Forever, Gold

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2010). “We: Introduction by Will Self”, p.61, Random House

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• We have probably wondered in our many lonesome moments if there is one corner in this competitive, demanding world where it is safe to be relaxed, to expose ourselves to someone else, and to give unconditionally. It might be very small and hidden, but if this corner exists, it calls for a search through the complexities of our human relationships in order to find it.

  Henri Nouwen

  Order, Giving, World

  Henri J. M. Nouwen (2005). “The Dance of Life: Weaving Sorrows and Blessings Into One Joyful Step”

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• It is tempting when looking at the life of anyone who has committed suicide to read into the decision to die a vastly complex web of reasons; and, of course, such complexity is warranted. No one illness or event causes suicide; and certainly no one knows all, or perhaps even most, of the motivations behind the killing of the self. But psychopathology is almost always there, and its deadliness is fierce. Love, success, and friendship are not always enough to counter the pain and destructiveness of severe mental illness

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Pain, Motivation

  FaceBook post by Kay Redfield Jamison from Feb 18, 2013

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• People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse "nobodies"-both of which are, of course, nonsensical descriptors, for we are all, by necessity, individuals with distinct identities and comparable claims on existence. Such words are nevertheless an apt vehicle for conveying the disparate treatment accorded to different groups. Those without status are all but invisible: they are treated brusquely by others, their complexities trampled upon and their singularities ignored.

  Alain de Botton

  People, Important, Identity

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• Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.

  Michael Shermer

  Environmental, Flip, Global Warming

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.36, Henry Holt and Company

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• An immune system of enormous complexity is present in all vertebrate animals. When we place a population of lymphocytes from such an animal in appropriate tissue culture fluid, and when we add an antigen, the lymphocytes will produce specific antibody molecules, in the absense of any nerve cells. I find it astonishing that the immune system embodies a degree of complexity which suggests some more or less superficial though striking analogies with human language, and that this cognitive system has evolved and functions without assistance of the brain.

  Niels Kaj Jerne

  Animal, Cells, Brain

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• Foreign policy of a pluralistic democracy like the United States should be based on bipartisanship because bipartisanship is the means and the framework for formulating policies based on moderation and on the recognition of the complexity of the human condition. That has been the tradition since the days of Truman and Vandenberg all the way until recent times.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Mean, Democracy, United States

  Address to the New American Strategies Conference, October 28, 2003.

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• Fate loves to invent patterns and designs. Its difficulty lies in complexity. But life itself is difficult because of its simplicity. It has only a few things of a grandeur not fit for us.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Life, Lying, Fate

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1984). “Prose and poetry”, Burns & Oates

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• What is to be sought in designs for the display of information is the clear portrayal of complexity. Not the complication of the simple; rather the task of the designer is to give visual access to the subtle and the difficult - that is, revelation of the complex.

  Edward Tufte

  Simple, Giving, Design

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• We only have to look around us to see how complexity and psychic 'temperature' are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. This indication is so familiar to us that we cannot but recognize the objective, experiential, reality of a transformation of the planet 'as a whole.'

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Science, Reality, Psychics

  "The Heart of Matter". Book by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 1950.

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