Nothing Is As Simple As It Seems Quotes & Sayings

Here is the easiest way to explain the genius of Johnny Cash: Singing from the perspective of a convicted muderer in the song "Folsom Prison Blues,: Cash is struck by pangs of regret when he sits in his cell and hears a distant train whistle. This is because people on that train are "probably drinkin' coffee." And this is also why Cash seems completely credible as a felon: He doesn't want freedom or friendship or Jesus or a new lawyer. He wants coffee. Within the mind of a killer, complex feeling are eerily simple. This is why killers can shoot men in Reno just to watch them die, and the rest of us usually can't. — Chuck Klosterman

The government announced that never again will this country allow such a 'lapse in humanity to poison us and strip people of their basic human rights.' Everybody looks back and wonders how we allowed it to happen in the first place. It all seems so simple now. — Cecelia Ahern

TEF is predicated on logic, a simple wager that every human faces:
If a reasoning human being loves and values life, they will want to live as long as possible-the desire to be immortal. Nevertheless, it's impossible to know if they're going to be immortal once they die. To do nothing doesn't help the odds of attaining immortality-since it seems evident that everyone will die someday and possibly cease to exist. To try to do something scientifically constructive towards ensuring immortality beforehand is the most logical conclusion. — Zoltan Istvan

I have long held firm to my suspicion that some people are just evil. In some cases I'll concede it seems as though it is thrust upon someone who had little real hope of avoiding it. However tragic that reality, the simple fact remains that it is more important to protect the rest of society for as long as it remains a danger to them. — Jeremy Kyle

Among all the complaints you hear these days about the crimes of the media, it seems to me the critics miss the big one. It is that especially TV, but also we of the print press, tend to reduce mess and complexity and ambiguity to a simple story line that doesn't reflect reality so much as it distorts it ... What bothers me about the journalistic tendency to reduce unmanageable reality to self-contained, movielike little dramas is not just that we falsify when we do this. It is also that we really miss the good story. — Meg Greenfield

'How much longer will I live?' ... Only one thing seems clear to me. Every day should be well-lived. What a simple truth! Still, it is worthy of my attention. — Henri Nouwen

Horror, terror, fear, panic: these are the emotions which drive wedges between us, split us off from the crowd, and make us alone. It is paradoxical that feelings and emotions we associate with the "mob instinct" should do this, but crowds are lonely places to be, we're told, a fellowship with no love in it. The melodies of the horror tale are simple and repetitive, and they are melodies of disestablishment and disintegration . . . but another paradox is that the ritual outletting of these emotions seems to bring things back to a more stable and constructive state again. — Stephen King

My take on all these things is pretty simple. It's all on the table, every bit of it, and you should use anything that improves the quality of your wiring and doesn't get in the way of your story. If you like an alliterative phrases-the knights of nowhere battling the nabobs of nullity-by all means throw it in and see how it looks on paper. If it seems to work, it can stay. If it doesn't (and to me this one sounds pretty bad, like Spiro Agnew crossed with Robert Jordan), well that delete key is on your machine for a good reason. — Stephen King

I think romance is maligned in large part because at first glance, love seems so pedestrian. It's all around us. It's in books and songs and movies and on billboards, so how could it really hold literary value? But what people tend to forget is that the search for love - for the simple idea that there is someone out there who will see us for who we are and accept us isn't trite. It's a huge part of our lives. And it's an enormous part of our dreams.
There are so many fabulous romances out there - there's something for everyone. I really believe that. And I believe that most of the people who look down their noses at the genre haven't ever read a romance novel. I think that if they did, they'd be really surprised by how good great romance can be. — Sarah MacLean

I don't care if I'm loved back, I still want to love someone.Someone, from the bottom of my heart ... Straightforward, unwavering ... It seems like such a simple thing, so then why ... Must it be so incredibly hard? — Ai Yazawa

We are living in an artificial world - a world of fantasies and illusions. We've learned beautiful phrases but haven't learned yet how to carry out that little bit that we know. Our brains are stuffed with quotations, while at the same time nine out of ten of these dogmas are incomprehensible, murky, or lies. Which are worthwhile and which are not? Yes, I must stop being false before others and myself. How simple it all seems! But how do I do this? Let just a little time pass, and then we may understand - only the simplest, honorable acts determine the value of a man. Only I myself can and must help myself to become an adult. — Boris Gorbachevsky

We don't keep jerks; life is too short to work with them and really way too short to pay them and work with them too. Seems simple, but it requires that you fight to build an incredible team and culture from the moment you post a position until you celebrate their retirement. Every day every behavior, attitude, and execution has to be led well by a courageous, loving leader. — Dave Ramsey

I tell you it's no joke to paint a portrait. I wonder that I am not more timid when I begin. I feel almost certain that I can do it. It seems very simple. I don't think of the time that is sure to come when I almost despair, when the whole thing seems hopeless. — William Morris Hunt

The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated ... The importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyod the two greatest men of antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Seen from the air, the male mind must look rather like the canals of Europe, with ideas being towed along well-worn towpaths by heavy-footed dray horses. There is never any doubt that they will, despite wind and weather, reach their destinations by following a simple series of connected lines.
But the female mind, even in my limited experience, seems more of a vast and teeming swamp, but a swamp that knows in an instant whenever a stranger
even miles away
has so much as dipped a single toe into her waters. People who talk about this phenomenon, most of whom know nothing whatsoever about it, call it woman's intuition. — Alan Bradley

In theory, cars are fairly simple. If they don't start, it's either the fuel system or the electrical system. Teach yourself about the path of each in your engine and tracing it is fairly straightforward. But at the beginning, mastering each new system seems like an unreachable shore. The car is effectively a black box. — Adam Savage

To tell the truth is to provide armament against a world too full of cruelties to be defeated with simple falsehoods. If these truths mean the world is less comforting than it might have been, it seems like a pretty small price to pay. — Mira Grant

That's right," said Pepper. "Because," she added, "if we beat them, we'd have to be our own deadly enemies. It'd be me an' Adam against Brian an' Wensley," She sat back. "Everyone needs a Greasy Johnson," she said.
"Yeah," said Adam. "That's what I thought. It's no good anyone winning. That's what I thought." He stared at Dog, or through Dog.
"Seems simple enough to me," said Wensleydale, sitting back. "I don't see why it's taken thousands of years to sort out. — Neil Gaiman

Love seems like such a simple thing to ask for. Such a basic right. It takes no skill, no experience, no money, no education, nothing
it can happen to anyone.
But it doesn't happen to everyone.
Even though everyone, deep down, wants it.
Anyway, I do. — Beth Harbison

Everyone is waiting for someone to change the world and no one seems to be doing much. Now what if everyone started thinking that someone who can change the world is me? This simple thinking will make all the difference to change our world. — Jeroninio Almeida

Nothing in nature is as simple as it sometimes seems when reduced to words. — Hal Borland

How many times his (Port's) friends, envying him his life, had said to him: "Your life is so simple." "Your life seems always to go in a straight line." Whenever they had said the words he heard in them an implicit reproach: it is not difficult to build a straight road on a treeless plain. He felt that what they really meant to say was: "You have chosen the easiest terrain." But if they elected to place obstacles in their own way-which they clearly did, encumbering themselves with every sort of unnecessary allegiance-that was no reason why they should object to his having simplified his life. So it was with a certain annoyance that he would say: "Everyone makes the life he wants. Right?" as though there were nothing further to be said. — Paul Bowles

Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. At the edge of perception, weird things dance and howl. — M.H. Boroson

Each one, then, should love his life, even though it be not very attractive, for it is the only life. It is a boon that will never return and that each person should tend and enjoy with care; it is one's capital, large or small, and can not be treated as an investment like those whose dividends are payable through eternity. Life is an annuity; nothing is more certain than that. So that all efforts are to be respected that tend to ameliorate the tenure of this perishable possession which, at the end of every day, has already lost a little of its value. Eternity, the bait by which simple folk are still lured, is not situated beyond life, but in life itself, and is divided among all men, all creatures. Each of us holds but a small portion of it, but that share is so precious that it suffices to enrich the poorest. Let us then take the bitter and the sweet in confidence, and when the fall of the days seems to whirl about us, let us remember that dusk is also dawn. — Remy De Gourmont

Live and everyone would die. Die and everyone would live. It seemed like such a simple choice. But nothing is ever as simple as it seems. — Heather Brewer

It seems everyone is converging on a simple set of facts: Our lives are digital, and we wish to share our lives. Pinterest came at it through images, artfully curated. Facebook came at it through friends, cunningly organized. Dropbox came to it via files, cleverly clouded. — John Battelle

The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple. — Alice Munro

Many people believe that the free market, despite some admitted advantages, is a picture of disorder and chaos. Nothing is "planned," everything is haphazard. Government dictation, on the other hand, seems simple and orderly; decrees are handed down and they are obeyed. — Murray N. Rothbard

We are looking for a complete, coherent, and simple understanding of reality. Given what we know about the universe, there seems to be no reason to invoke God as part of this description. — Sean M. Carroll

It is their nature, beautiful and simple. That you would destroy such beings, Mr. Lincoln, such superior creatures, seems madness to me."
"That you speak of them with such reverence, Mr. Poe, seems madness to me."
"Can you imagine it? Can you imagine seeing the universe through such eyes? Laughing in the face of time and death - the world your Garden of Eden? Your library? Your harem? — Seth Grahame-Smith

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 process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes. — C.S. Lewis

In the history of the concept of number has been adjective (three cows, three monads) and noun (three, pure and simple), and now ... number seems to be more like a verb (to triple). — Barry Mazur

It would be good," thought Prince Andrei, glancing at the little image that his sister had hung around his neck with such reverence and emotion, "It would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya . How good it would be to know where to seek help in this life, and what to expect after it, beyond the grave! How happy and at peace I should be if I could now say:" Lord have mercy on me! ... But to whom should I say this? To some power
indefinable and incomprehensible, to which I not only cannot appeal, but which I cannot express in words
The Great All or Nothing," he said to himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Marya? There is nothing certain, nothing except the nothingness of everything that is comprehensible to me, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all important! — Leo Tolstoy

Everything seems really simple on paper until you take a camera out of the box. — David Fincher

The computer seems easy because Apple makes the products so easy to use at home. It's the simple things, like getting the TV set up or getting the speakers to work. That drives me crazy. — Chris O'Donnell

String theory, therefore, is rich enough to explain all the fundamental laws of nature. Starting from a simple theory of a vibrating string, one can extract the theory of Einstein, Kaluza-Klein theory, supergravity, the Standard Model, and even GUT theory. It seems nothing less than a miracle that, starting from some purely geometric arguments from a string, one is able to rederive the entire progress of physics for the past 2 milleninia. All the theories so far discussed in this book are automatically included in string theory. — Michio Kaku

If I go out into nature, into the unknown, to the fringes of knowledge, everything seems mixed up and contradictory, illogical, and incoherent. This is what research does; it smooths out contradictions and makes things simple, logical, and coherent. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Man knows, and in the course of years he comes to know it increasingly well, feeling it ever more acutely, that memory is weak and fleeting, and if he doesn't write down what he has learned and experienced, that which he carries within him will perish when he does. This is when it seems everyone wants to write a book. Singers and football players, politicians and millionaires. And if they themselves do not know how, or else lack the time, they commission someone else to do it for them ... engendering this reality is the impression of writing as a simple pursuit, though those who subscribe to that view might do well to ponder Thomas Mann's observation that, 'a writer is a man for whom writing is more difficult than it is for others — Ryszard Kapuscinski

I have the bigger iPad, but the Mini is the best. It just seems perfect. The old one seems so big and heavy. I like simple and clean. — Jeff Garlin

Sounds simple, doesn't it, this notion of simplicity? Simple things done simply by a simple person. But it's not as simple as it seems. — Fennel Hudson

When you can make it this simple, though, just do the right thing. Even if you could get away with less. Even when other people are doing the wrong thing. Even though the wrong thing seems like no big deal. — Price Pritchett

Cassoulet, like life itself, is not so simple as it seems. — Paula Wolfert

[N]early every creationist debater will mention the second law of thermodynamics and argue that complex systems like the earth and life cannot evolve, because the second law seems to say that everything in nature is running down and losing energy, not getting more complex. But that's NOT what the second law says; every creationist has heard this but refuses to acknowledge it. The second law only applies to closed systems, like a sealed jar of heated gases that gradually cools down and loses energy. But the earth is not a closed system
it constantly gets new energy from the sun, and this (through photosynthesis) is what powers life and makes it possible for life to become more complex and evolve. It seems odd that the creationists continue to misuse the second law of thermodynamics when they have been corrected over and over again, but the reason is simple: it sounds impressive to their audience with limited science education, and if a snow job works, you stay with it. — Donald R. Prothero

What they want seems so simple-time together, a lifetime together, or what is left of a lifetime together-and yet that small goal, he knows, is fraught with endless complications: a maze of responsibilities and commitments, deceptions and betrayals. Why, why, why he asks himself silently for the hundredth time, couldn't they have remained somehow connected-in touch , with all that phrase implies-until they were old enough to find each other again? — Anita Shreve

There is something about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that's unbearably sad. Like most unbearably sad things, it seems incredibly elusive and complex in its causes and simple in its effect: on board the Nadir - especially at night - I felt despair. The wor's overused and banalified now, despair, but it's a serious word, and I'm using it seriously. — David Foster Wallace