#complex

In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork." Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark." Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of a gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark," as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork." But the book represents the dreams of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau words" in Through the Looking Glass. From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark," in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature. ↗

— Murray Gell-Mann

#science #dreams

For the vision of a novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he relates them; specialised because since he is a single person with one sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe with conviction are strictly limited ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#duality #joseph-conrad #writing-craft #life

Ideology follows the money." "Governments don't protect people, people protect governments." "To accept the legitimacy of the state is to embrace the necessity for war. ↗

— Lawrence Samuels

#complexity-science #economics #human-action #politics #money

I don't let people use me. That's why I like a small number of people in my life. The more people in my life, the more complex it becomes, so I just try to keep it at a minimum. ↗

— Anita Baker

#complex #i #just #keep #life

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#defending #does #duty #guilt #itself

Every democracy is constructed day-to-day. And the electoral process reduces and minimalizes every single aspect of human complexity. We're putting it into pamphlets. We're doing a publicity show. We're becoming symbols. ↗

— Gael Garcia Bernal

#becoming #complexity #constructed #day-to-day #democracy

The mother-daughter relationship is the most complex. ↗

— Wynonna Judd

#most #relationship

I do write about people who are complex and are striving with something and can't quite get past their own stuff, which would be a proxy for myself because that's what the deal is with me. ↗

— Eric Bogosian

#because #complex #deal #get #i

Our live set's become increasingly complex recently; we've been doing stuff that's been vastly too much information for most people to deal with and I think it's quite interesting watching how people behave in those situations, under those circumstances. ↗

— Sean Booth

#been #behave #circumstances #complex #deal

Despite what they tell you, there are simply no moral absolutes in a complex world. ↗

— Berkeley Breathed

#despite #moral #simply #tell #world