#complexity

I don't really have preferred roles except those with some complexity. ↗

— Richard Roxburgh

#except #i #preferred #really #roles

In literature, too, we admire prose in which a small and astutely arranged set of words has been constructed to carry a large consignment of ideas. 'We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others,' writes La Rochefoucauld in an aphorism which transports us with an energy and exactitude comparable to that of Maillard bridge. The Swiss engineer reduces the number of supports just as the French writer compacts into a single line what lesser minds might have taken pages to express. We delight in complexity to which genius has lent an appearance of simplicity. (p 207) ↗

— Alain de Botton

#engineering #literature #simplicity #words #writing

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. ↗

— E.F. Schumacher

#elegance #genius #inspirational #simplicity #violence

I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#diversity #life

The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it. ↗

— Lord Palmerston

#politics #men

I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style. ↗

— Ken Burns

#becomes #careful #complexity #composition #drama

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#complexity #cumulative #evolution #existence #explaining

A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding. ↗

— William Gibson

#city #clusters #complexity #computer #constellations

The middle path makes me wary. . . . But in the middle of my life, I am coming to see the middle path as a walk with wisdom where conversations of complexity can be found, that the middle path is the path of movement. . . . In the right and left worlds, the stories are largely set. . . . We become missionaries for a position . . . practitioners of the missionary position. Variety is lost. Diversity is lost. Creativity is lost in our inability to make love with the world. ↗

— Terry Tempest Williams

#compromise #conversation #creativity #diversity #left

There's something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children. ↗

— Maurice Sendak

#complexity #country #opposed #something #understanding