Complex Simplicity Quotes & Sayings

He always reminded us that every atom in our bodies was once part of a distant star that had exploded. He talked about how evolution moves from simplicity toward complexity, and how human intelligence is the highest known expression of evolution. I remember him telling me that a frog's brain is much more complex than a star. He saw human consciousness as the first neuron of the universe coming to life and awareness. A spark in the darkness, waiting to spread to fire. — Greg Iles

I believe it was the great ogre philosopher Gary who observed that complexity is, generally speaking, an illusion of conscious desire. All things exist in as simple a form as necessity dictates. When a thing is labeled 'complex,' that's just a roundabout way of saying you're not observant enough to understand it. — A. Lee Martinez

Mathematical analysis and computer modelling are revealing to us that the shapes and processes we encounter in nature -the way that plants grow, the way that mountains erode or rivers flow, the way that snowflakes or islands achieve their shapes, the way that light plays on a surface, the way the milk folds and spins into your coffee as you stir it, the way that laughter sweeps through a crowd of people - all these things in their seemingly magical complexity can be described by the interaction of mathematical processes that are, if anything, even more magical in their simplicity. Shapes that we think of as random are in fact the products of complex shifting webs of numbers obeying simple rules. The very word "natural" that we have often taken to mean "unstructured" in fact describes shapes and processes that appear so unfathomably complex that we cannot consciously perceive the simple natural laws at work.They can all be described by numbers. — Douglas Adams

Simplicity is no longer presented as a virtue. The value of complex and difficult language has been preached with such insistence that the public has begun to believe the lack of clarity must be a sign of artistic talent. — John Ralston Saul

The more we understand the simplicity of life, the less complex we shall live. — Lailah Gifty Akita

When faced with unbridled wildness of reality, dinosaurs fall into fevered delusions of grandeur. In fits of madness, they recreate the world in their own overblown image, bull-dozing the wild and replacing it with a wasteland that reflects their own emptiness. Where there was once the incredibly complex diversity of nature, there is now the dead simplicity of asphalt and concrete. — Curious George Brigade

Simplicity is complex. — Jayce O'Neal

Art should take what is complex and render it simply. It takes a lot of skill, human understanding, stamina, courage, energy, and heart to do that. — Anna Deavere Smith

Our everyday lives are filled with complex decisions. We long for simplicity and ordinariness. — Ursus Wehrli

The default movement on a software project should be in the direction of taking elements of the software away to make it simpler rather than adding elements to make it more complex. — Steve McConnell

Simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world. — Oscar Wilde

Thai food ain't about simplicity. It's about the juggling of disparate elements to create a harmonious finish. Like a complex musical chord it's got to have a smooth surface but it doesn't matter what's happening underneath. Simplicity isn't the dictum here, at all. Some westerners think it's a jumble of flavours, but to a Thai that's important, it's the complexity they delight in. — David

Just as all pop music is not simplistic, not all contemporary concert music is complex. Often what a person connects with goes much deeper than generalized issues of simplicity and complexity. — Michael Hersch

I know that scenario... that "You are going to die"... bullshit and bullshit I was next to you what did I fucking get?

- Simple answers of so complex questions... So simple questions and so complex answers... I never mean that and I never wanted that to happen. — Deyth Banger

Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:- so various yet so uniform-so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature's laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy. — Roderick Murchison

People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth. — Thomas Sowell

Phenomena complex-laws simple ... Know what to leave out. — Richard P. Feynman

Simplicity is a key to avoiding complication. Part of the definition of simplicity is 'not complex or complicated; sincere.' — Joyce Meyer

Simplicity is not about making something without ornament, but rather about making something very complex, then slicing elements away, until you reveal the very essence. — Christoph Niemann

Supernatural simplicity viewed and perceived with complexity, naturally; many suffer from an outside-in misunderstanding. — T.F. Hodge

Simple works, complex fails. — Timothy Ferriss

Dawes observed that the complex statistical algorithm adds little or no value. One can do just as well by selecting a set of scores that have some validity for predicting the outcome and adjusting the values to make them comparable (by using standard scores or ranks). A formula that combines these predictors with equal weights is likely to be just as accurate in predicting new cases as the multiple-regression formula that was optimal in the original sample. More recent research went further: formulas that assign equal weights to all the predictors are often superior, because they are not affected by accidents of sampling. — Daniel Kahneman

Complex things are easy to do. Simplicity's the real challenge. — Robert James Waller

He believed that he must, that he could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the easy tranquil things of life. He had made mistakes, but he could overlook these. He had been a fool, but that could be forgiven. The time wasted
must be relinquished. What else could one do about it? Things were too complex, but they might be reduced to simplicity again. Recovery was possible. — Saul Bellow

Plot is, I think, the good writer's last resort and the dullard's first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored. I lean more heavily on intuition, and have been able to do that because my books tend to be based on situation rather than story. Some of the ideas which have produced those books are more complex than others, but the majority start out with the stark simplicity of a department store window display or a waxwork tableau. I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free. My job isn't to help them work their way free, or manipulate them to safety - those are jobs which require the noisy jackhammer of plot - but to watch what happens and then write it down. — Stephen King

Contrary to what most people say and believe, the simplicity is a great thing, i actually believe in - complexity is a fantastic thing and complex things should be approached in a complex way. — Tarun J. Tejpal

The greatest wisdom is in simplicity. Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness. It's not complex or elaborate. The real knowledge is free. It's encoded in your DNA. All you need is within you. Great teachers have said that from the beginning. Find your heart, and you will find your way. — Carlos Barrios

Nature is capable of building complex structures by processes of self-organization; simplicity begets complexity. — Victor J. Stenger

The beauty of physics lies in the extent which seemingly complex and unrelated phenomena can be explained and correlated through a high level of abstraction by a set of laws which are amazing in their simplicity. — Melvin Schwartz

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, 'Seek simplicity and distrust it. — Alfred North Whitehead

The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution. — Anton Chekhov

Human inventions march from the
complex to the simple, and simplicity is always perfection. — Alexandre Dumas

The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play. — James Kirk

The man of fixed ingrained principles who has mapped out a straight course, and has the courage and self-control to adhere to it, does not find life complex. Complexities are all of our own making. — B.C. Forbes

The structures were austere and simple, until one looked at them and realized what work, what complexity of method, what tension of thought had achieved the simplicity. — Ayn Rand

Persuading through Simplifying - Using computing technology to reduce complex behavior to simple tasks increases the benefit/cost ratio of the behavior and influences users to perform the behavior. — B. J. Fogg

Simplicity is the heart of everything. If you look to the desert, apparently the desert is very simple but it's full of life, it's full of hidden places and the beauty is that it looks simple but it's complex in the way that it expresses the soul of the world or God. — Paulo Coelho

A mind that is competitive, held in the conflict of becoming, thinking in terms of comparison, is not capable of discovering the real. Thought-feeling which is intensely aware is in the process of constant self-discovery - which discovery, being true, is liberating and creative. Such self-discovery brings about freedom from acquisitiveness and from the complex life of the intellect. It is this complex life of the intellect that finds gratification in addictions: destructive curiosity, speculation, mere knowledge, capacity, gossip, and so on; and these hindrances prevent simplicity of life. An addiction, a specialization gives sharpness to the mind, a means of focusing thought, but it is not the flowering of thought-feeling into reality. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The only simplicity for which I would give a straw is that which is on the other side of the complex - not that which never has divined it. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

When we are able to do something so easily, we regard such thing as simplicity; but simplicity is complexity. Withing the things which are simple lay the things which are complex and within the things which are complex, lay the things which are simple — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and he understood the reasons, and accepted his destiny; but when he awoke there was only a dark resignation, a valiant ignorance, for the machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of a wild beast.
Years later, Dante was dying in Ravenna, as unjustified and as lonely as any other man. In a dream, God declared to him the secret purpose of his life and work; Dante, in wonderment, knew at last who and what he was and blessed the bitterness of his life ... upon waking, he felt that he had received and lost an infinite thing, something that he would not be able to recuperate or even glimpse, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a man. — Jorge Luis Borges

When discussing complex systems like brains and other societies, it is easy to oversimplify: I call this Occam's lobotomy. — I. J. Good

Reality is infinitely complex, yet it is designed to experience in simplicity. — Guy Lozier

As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth. — Henry David Thoreau

I was wondering aimlessly; too many road were open ... too many resolves, too complex, allowed of being taken. I took ... by far the simplest of them all. — Edmond Rostand

Artistic simplicity is more complex than artistic complexity for it arises via the simplification of the latter and against its backdrop or system. — Yuri Lotman

we seek what we think are simple explanations for events in our lives because we believe the simpler something is, the more fundamental - the more true - it is. But when it comes to randomness, our desire for simplicity can mislead us. Not everything is simple, and to try to force it to be is to misrepresent reality. I believe that the inappropriate application of simple rules and models onto complex mechanisms causes damage - to whatever project is at hand and even to the company as a whole. The simple explanation is so desirable that it is often embraced even when it's completely inappropriate. — Ed Catmull

The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men. — Jorge Luis Borges

Paradoxical thinking requires that we embrace a view of the world in which opposites are joined, so that we can see the world clearly and see it whole ... The result is a world more complex and confusing than the one made simple by either-or thought - but that simplicity is merely the dullness of death. When we think together we reclaim the life force in the world, in our students, in ourselves. — Parker J. Palmer

As we live and as we are, Simplicity - with a capital "S" - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Simplicity is a most complex form — Duke Ellington

There is a difference between our wisdom and nature's simplicity. That reflects the burden of a complex intelligence. A complex intelligence like ours is impotent compared to the intelligence of a monarch butterfly migrating from Canada to Mexico, or the intelligence of hummingbirds that have co-evolved with the flowers all along their migration route. That seems so simple; it just happens, it just unfolds. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

The refined simplicity should develop out of the complex. It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkie instead of the other way around. — Mary Pickford

Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic the new way of seeing. I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation. I enjoy the simplicity. Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways and sidewalks. Give me plastics, periodical tables, TV dinners with vegetables no more complex than peas mixed with diced carrots. Shine floodlights into dark corners: no ghosts. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Fourier's theorem has all the simplicity and yet more power than other familiar explanations in science. Stated simply, any complex pattern, whether in time or space, can be described as a series of overlapping sine waves of multiple frequencies and various amplitudes. — Bruce Hood

Not all things that are simple are all that simple. Certain simple things carry complex weight! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple. — Pete Seeger

I have a confession: I'm not a man of simplicity. I spent my entire early career making complex stuff. Lots of complex stuff. — John Maeda

Even when the truth is in fact simple, simplicity is still relative. — Criss Jami

By walking naked you gain far more than coolness. You feel an unexpected sense of freedom from restraint. An uplifting and almost delirious sense of simplicity. In this new simplicity you soon find that you have become, in a new and surer sense, and integral part of the simple, complex world you are walking through. And then you are really walking. — Colin Fletcher

the simplicity of many of Bush's pronouncements is often misinterpreted as evidence that he has penetrated to the core of a complex issue, when in fact exactly the opposite is true: They often mark his refusal even to consider complexity. And that's particularly troubling in a world where the challenges America faces are often quite complex and require rigorous, sustained, disciplined analysis. — Al Gore

Don't be fooled by the many books on complexity or by the many complex and arcane algorithms you find in this book or elsewhere. Although there are no textbooks on simplicity, simple systems work and complex don't. — Jim Gray

If this seems complex, the reason is because Tao is both simple and complex. It is complex when we try to understand it, and simple when we allow ourselves to experience it. — Benjamin Stanley Rosenthal

Everything is complex and everything is simple. The rose has no why attached to it, it blooms because it blooms, how no thought of itself, or desire to be seen. What could be more complicated than a rose for someone who wants to understand it? What could be simpler for someone who wants nothing? The complexity of thinking, the simplicity of beholding. — Andre Comte-Sponville

That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. [BusinessWeek, May 25 1998] — Steve Jobs

A girl does not treat a possible lover with unvarying simplicity and directness. In all its phases, love is complex; friendship is not. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible. — Alan Kay

Simple foods connect with your body's needs in complex ways. — Bryant McGill

Jesus was a man for simple people. He didn't make his messages incredibly complex. If you were a person that had the eyes to see and the ears to hear ... then his message was easily understood. — Brandon Andress

Simplicity shall make you simple and keep you away from so many woes of life! It is simple! Just go for simplicity and be simple, Period! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The simplicity that all this presupposes is not easy to attain. I find that my life constantly threatens to become complex and divisive. A life of prayer is basically a very simple life. This simplicity, however, is the result of asceticism and effort: it is not a spontaneous simplicity. — Thomas Merton

However we select from nature a complex [of phenomena] using the criterion of simplicity, in no case will its theoretical treatment turn out to be forever appropriate (sufficient) ... I do not doubt that the day will come when [general relativity], too, will have to yield to another one, for reasons which at present we do not yet surmise. I believe that this process of deepening theory has no limits. — Albert Einstein

Irony of the world is that it wants to simplify the complexity and complicate the simplicity. — Vikrmn

Mastery ... is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge, hard work, and skill. — Yvon Chouinard

Simplicities are enormously complex. Consider the sentence "I love you". — Richard O. Moore

We tend to rush toward the complex when trying to solve a daunting problem, but in this case, simplicity wins. Better buildings, responsible energy use and renewable energy choices are all we need to tackle both energy independence and climate change, — Edward Mazria

If the truth should be complex and somewhat disillusioning, it would still not be a merit to substitute for it some more dramatic and comforting simplicity. — Clarence Irving Lewis

Never again will I make the simple into the complex. Something of true value does not become more valuable because it becomes complicated. Experience and conditions come and go; complications arise and fall away, but the simple action of God is eternal in the universe. — Donald Curtis

Uneducated people are unfortunate in that they do grasp complex issues, educated people, on the other hand, often do not understand simplicity, which is a far greater misfortune. — Franz Grillparzer