#complexity

Everything from airplanes to kitchen blenders and even chopsticks comes with an instruction manual. Children, despite all their complexity, do not. ↗

— Lawrence Kutner

#chopsticks #comes #complexity #despite #even

We need a President who is not afraid of complexity, who believes in an open and tolerant society, and who knows that the world can be made new again - and that President is Al Gore. ↗

— Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg

#again #al #al gore #believes #complexity

Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple. ↗

— Edward de Bono

#attention #being #complex #complexity #could

Today the network of relationships linking the human race to itself and to the rest of the biosphere is so complex that all aspects affect all others to an extraordinary degree. Someone should be studying the whole system, however crudely that has to be done, because no gluing together of partial studies of a complex nonlinear system can give a good idea of the behavior of the whole. ↗

— Murray Gell-Mann

#science #systems #science

Indeed, "brute force" solutions are often characteristic of advanced cultures, not primitive ones. The Romans and their predecessors spent a long time figuring out how to build arches... and virtually all our buildings today use post-and-lintel construction, precisely what the arch was devised to replace. We have better materials and more money, and given that, arches are usually not worth the extra complexity. ↗

— Henry Spencer

#brute-force #complexity #elegance #engineering #architecture

To make absolute, unconditional surrender to the woman one loves is to break every bond save the desire not to lose her, which is the most terrible bond of all ↗

— Henry Miller

#love

She did not know yet how sometimes people keep parts of themselves hidden and secret, sometimes wicked and unkind parts, but often brave or wild or colorful parts, cunning or powerful or even marvelous, beautiful parts, just locked up away at the bottom of their hearts. They do this because they are afraid of the world and of being stared at, or relied upon to do feats of bravery or boldness. And all of those brave and wild and cunning and marvelous and beautiful parts they hid away and left in the dark to grow strange mushrooms—and yes, sometimes those wicked and unkind parts, too—end up in their shadow. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#layers #masks #beauty

Expansion means complexity and complexity decay. ↗

— C. Northcote Parkinson

#decay #expansion #means

Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex. ↗

— M. Scott Peck

#inspirational #experience

Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple. ↗

— Pete Seeger

#fool #genius #simplicity #simplicity