Complicated Quotes - Page 33

• Chantal's only ruse ... was her shattering simplicity. While a weak man or an imposter is always more complicated than the problem he is trying to solve, and thinking to encompass his adversary, merely keeps prowling interminably around himself, the heroic nature will throw itself into the heart of the danger to turn it to its own use, just as captured artillery is turned about and aimed at the backs of the fleeing enemy.

  Georges Bernanos

  Heart, Men, Thinking

  "Joy". Book by Georges Bernanos, 1929.

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• Well there's a line that you must toe and it'll soon be time to go but it's darker than you know in those Complicated Shadows

  Elvis Costello

  Shadow, Lines, Toes

  Song: Complicated Shadows, Album: All This Useless Beauty, 1996

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• There is no problem so complicated that you can't find a very simple answer to it if you look at it right.

  Douglas Adams

  Simple, Looks, Answers

  Douglas Adams (2005). “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time”, p.99, Del Rey

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• Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking; hence its results must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots that it unravels.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Philosophy, Thinking, Simple

  Ludwig Wittgenstein, James Carl Klagge, Alfred Nordmann (1993). “Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951”, p.183, Hackett Publishing

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• I know of nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. Instead of the sound powerful judgement which would probably have grown up if they had learned nothing, their thoughts creep timidly and hypnotically after words, principles and formulae, constantly by the same paths. What they have acquired is a spider's web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure supports, but complicated enough to provide confusion.

  Ernst Mach

  Powerful, Confusion, Support

  Ernst Mach, Thomas J. McCormack (2014). “Popular Scientific Lectures”, p.288, Cambridge University Press

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• I have often felt that I would find it more complicated, troublesome and unpleasant to ascertain the feelings by which a woman lives than to plumb the innermost thoughts of an earthworm.

  Osamu Dazai

  Women, Feelings, Troublesome

  Phyllis I. Lyons, Osamu Dazai (1975). “The Osamu saga: the autobiographical fiction of Dazai Osamu”

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• Things become complicated if there are enough people to complexify them.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  People, Enough, Ifs

  1991 Of the19,000-member congressional back-up staff. In the NewYork Times,12 Nov.

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• Oh, love is very much a physical thing.... I realize that it's very complicated, and I'm sure it can't be traced to individual neurons and hormones, but I think it's very much a physiological sensation that takes place in the brain.

  Alan Lightman

  Love Is, Thinking, Brain

  Alan Lightman (2007). “Ghost: A Novel”, p.181, Vintage

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• One of the most terrible things about the English education System in Ireland is its ruthlessness...it is cold and mechanical, like the ruthlessness of an immensely powerful engine. A machine vast, complicated... It grinds night and day; it obeys immutable and predetermined laws; it is as devoid of understanding, of sympathy, of imagination, as is any other piece of machinery that performs an appointed task. Into it is fed all raw human material in Ireland; it seizes upon it inexorably and rends and compresses and remoulds...

  Patrick Pearse

  Powerful, Night, Law

  "The Cause Of Ireland" by Liz Curtis, Beyond the Pale Publications, Belfast, (p. 190), 1994.

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• He [Reagan] was who he was, and it was not complicated. You didn't get a different person in an interview.

  David E. Hoffman

  Different, Interviews, Persons

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Any great artist is wrestling with their sadness and loneliness, their fears, anxieties and securities, and they're transfiguring those into complicated forms of expression that affect our hearts, minds and souls and remind us of who we are as human beings, the fragility of our human status and the inevitability of death.

  Cornel West

  Loneliness, Heart, Sadness

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Under extremely difficult circumstances (Iraq) pursues the inherently complicated task of rebuilding the country. Yet Iraq continues, courageously, to reach for the promise of a democratic, federal and pluralistic state, where generations of oppressed Iraqis will regain their dignity, freedom and the right to join the civilized and progressive nations of the world.

  Jalal Talabani

  Country, Iraq, Promise

  "Keep U.S., British forces in Iraq, says Talabani". The Toronto Star, September 23, 2006.

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• An old French mathematician said: "A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street." This clearness and ease of comprehension, here insisted on for a mathematical theory, I should still more demand for a mathematical problem if it is to be perfect; for what is clear and easily comprehended attracts, the complicated repels us.

  David Hilbert

  Men, Perfect, Ease

  "Mathematical Problems". Lecture delivered before the International Congress of Mathematicians at Paris, translated by Maby Winton Newson, mathcs.clarku.edu. 1900.

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• All that was clear that the profits to be had from smart people making complicated bets overwhelmed anything that could be had from servicing customers, or allocating capital to productive enterprise.

  Michael Lewis

  Smart, People, Overwhelmed

  Michael Lewis (2011). “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine”, p.258, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Me, I'm complicated. But it's a living, I tell myself. Also, every once in a long while this disease manages to produce a fine and beautiful truth--as (they say) some oyster illness makes the wondrously perfect pearl.

  Frank Loesser

  Beautiful, Oysters, Long

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• A civilization is complicated, in the first place, because it is dynamic; that is, it is constantly changing in the passage of time, until it has perished.

  Carroll Quigley

  Civilization, Firsts, Passage Of Time

  Carroll Quigley (1979). “The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis”, Liberty Fund Inc.

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• I see how complicated it is to make a film and how many people are involved and I love the fact that I get to sit in a room on my own and the set costs nothing and the actors cost nothing and I'm the director and it's so simple. You just need a pen and paper to make a book. You don't need a huge budget or a gaffer or a best boy.

  Markus Zusak

  Book, Boys, Simple

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• The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.

  George Sarton

  Acceptance, Simple, Ideas

  George Sarton (1952). “A History of Science: Ancient science through the Golden Age of Greece”

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• For the problem of decision-making in our complicated world is not how to get the problem simple enough so that we can all understand it; the problem is how to get our thinking about the problem as complex as humanly possible--and thus approach (we can never match) the complexity of the real world around us.

  Harlan Cleveland

  Real, Learning, Simple

  Harlan Cleveland (1966). “The obligations of power: American diplomacy in the search for peace”

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• As a mathematician, von Neumann was quick, brilliant, efficient, and enormously broad in scientific interests beyond mathematics itself. He knew his technical abilities; his virtuosity in following complicated reasoning and his insights were supreme; yet he lacked absolute self confidence.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Self Confidence, Brilliant, Mathematics

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 4: "Princeton Days", p. 76, 1991.

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• A work of art enters life very much like another human being - complicated, loaded with overtones and meaning, mysterious, enticing, obsessive, and beautiful. There's no way to control how it will be used, how it will be read, and that's part of the excitement of it.

  Budd Hopkins

  Beautiful, Art, Way

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• There are times when I love to play all kinds of complicated games in painting. But this is one case when I need to be fairly straightforward. I'll just try to paint the man, his intelligence, his amiability and his stature, maybe paint him fairly close to humor and try to get it just right.

  Nelson Shanks

  Men, Games, Play

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• My father is not around any more, so I cannot ask him to do my drawings for me. So, I had to find a different way. And I came up with the solution to use the printers then; I wasn't doing anything complicated. The nature of the printer is efficiency in itself and about working, being productive.

  Wade Guyton

  Father, Drawing, Different

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• Pulling a crystalline, cogent rule out of the murk of the court's First Amendment, public forum, and Establishment Clause doctrine is an act of creation too complicated for mere mortals.

  Dahlia Lithwick

  Doctrine, Establishment Clause, Firsts

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• 95% of Economics is common sense deliberately made complicated.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  Common Sense, Economics, Made

  YouTube Chanel "The RSA"/ "Ha-Joon Chang - 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism", www.youtube.com. September 9, 2010.

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