Quotes & Sayings About Oversimplification

When trying to fathom an immense, intricate system, drawing direct arrows of causality between micro and macro-components is perilous. Which stock caused the crash of '29? Which person triggered the outbreak of World War I? Which word of Poe's "The Rave" suffuses it with an atmosphere of brooding melancholy? (91) — Thomas Lewis

In a perfect world everything would be either black or white, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is. — Neal Shusterman

Let me see if I understand correctly now," the Jinni said at one point. "You and your relations believe that a ghost living in the sky can grant you wishes." "That is a gross oversimplification, and you know it." "And yet, according to men, we jinn are nothing but children's tales?" "This is different. This is about religion and faith." "And where exactly is the difference?" "Are you honestly asking, or being deliberately insulting?" "I'm honestly asking. — Helene Wecker

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization. — A.R. Ammons

Left vs. Right is an out-dated concept and an oversimplification of 21st Century politics — James Morcan

What I really don't like is oversimplification. — Thomas J. Sargent

At the risk of some oversimplification, if the skill composition of our work force meshed fully with the needs of our increasingly complex capital-stock, wage-skill differentials would be stable, and the percentage changes in wage rates would be the same for all job grades. — Alan Greenspan

I think during the Cold War in America at least, there was a division; there was the Soviet government and there were the oppressed people, who were not represented by this government. That was a massive oversimplification of what the true situation was there. There were certainly many people who were completely and fully alienated from the government. — Joe Weisberg

The American press is extraordinarily free and vigorous, as it should be. It should be, not because it is free of inaccuracy, oversimplification and bias, but because the alternative to that freedom is worse than those failings. — Robert Bork

With an absurd oversimplification, the 'invention' of the calculus is sometimes ascribed to two men, Newton and Leibniz. In reality, the calculus is the product of a long evolution that was neither initiated nor terminated by Newton and Leibniz, but in which both played a decisive part. — Richard Courant

In essence, oversimplification tends to take a partial truth and make it all powerful. — Gudjon Bergmann

Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification. — Karl Popper

Then winter ended and spring came, and I thought, even if I don't believe there's a poem in anything anymore, maybe I'll write a story. A lot of people do that when they can't seem to figure out who or what they love. It might be an oversimplification, but they seem to write poetry when they do know. — Jennifer Egan

The theoretical fruits of deliberate oversimplification through idealization are not to be denied ... Reality in all its messy particularity is too complicated to theorize about, taken straight. The issue is, rather (since every idealization is a strategic choice), which idealizations might really shed some light ... which will just land us ... diverting fairy tales. — Daniel Dennett

IT (The country) IS HEADED TOWARD OVERSIMPLIFICATION. YOU WANT TO SEE A PRESIDENT OF THE FUTURE? TURN ON ANY TELEVISION ON ANY SUNDAY MORNING - FIND ONE OF THOSE HOLY ROLLERS: THAT'S HIM, THAT'S THE NEW MISTER PRESIDENT! AND DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE FUTURE OF ALL THOSE KIDS WHO ARE GOING TO FALL IN THE CRACKS OF THIS GREAT, BIG, SLOPPY SOCIETY OF OURS? I JUST MET HIM; HE'S A TALL, SKINNY, FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY NAMED "DICK." HE'S PRETTY SCARY. WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM IS NOT UNLIKE WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE TV EVANGELIST - OUR FUTURE PRESIDENT. WHAT'S WRONG WITH BOTH OF THEM IS THAT THEY'RE SO SURE THEY'RE RIGHT! THAT'S PRETTY SCARY - THE FUTURE, I THINK, IS PRETTY SCARY. — John Irving

According to the most outspoken and vituperative Skeptics, therapists specializing in recovered memory therapy operate in a neverland of fairy dust and mythic monsters. Woefully out of touch with modern research, engaging in "crude psychiatric analysis," guilty of oversimplification, overextension, and "incestuous opinion citing," these misguided, undertrained, and overzealous clinicians are implanting false memories in the minds of suggestible clients, making "therapeutic lifers" out of their patients and ripping families apart. This — Elizabeth F. Loftus

All theories are oversimplifications, or at least lead to oversimplification. — Neil Postman

A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks semipopular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general. these have not been found-yet the optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks. — David M. Raup

"Biblical theology" refers to something more precise than theology that is faithful to the Bible. It might be helpful to draw a contrast: at the risk of oversimplification, systematic theology tends to organize theology topically and with an eye cast on its contemporary relevance, while biblical theology tends to organize the same biblical material so that it is easier to see the distinctive contribution of each biblical book and human author, and to trace the trajectories of themes across the Bible so we see how the books of the Bible hold together. — D. A. Carson

We've all heard that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, but that is a dangerous oversimplification. Many of the things that don't kill you can damage you for life. — Jonathan Haidt

The good must be clearly good but not wholly clear. If it is wholly clear it is too easy to reject.
What is wanted is an oversimplification, a reduction of a multitude of possibilities to only two. But if the recommended path were utterly devoid of mystery, it would cease to fascinate men ... .There would be nothing left to discuss and interpret, to lecture and write about, to admire and merely think about.
The world exacts a price for calling teachers wise: it keeps discussing the paths they recommend, but few men follow them. The wise give men endless opportunities to discuss what is good. — Walter Kaufmann

...[T]here is no art in being intelligible if one renounces all thoroughness of insight; but also it produces a disgusting medley of compiled observations and half-reasoned principles. Shallow pates enjoy this because it can be used for everyday chat, but the sagacious find in it only confusion, and being unsatisfied and unable to help themselves, they turn away their eyes, while philosophers, who see quite well through this delusion, are little listened to when they call men off for a time from this pretended popularity in order that they might be rightfully popular after they have attained a definite insight. — Immanuel Kant

It is an oversimplification to say that the opposite of irony is oversimplification. — Jedediah Purdy

Westernization is an often-used word in Korea, and can be applied to something considered cold, lacking in jeong, and going against traditional Korean values. To suggest that Korean households are now "Westernized," whatever that may mean exactly, would be a gross oversimplification. — Daniel Tudor

The competition between the two forces can be succinctly expressed as follows: Within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. Or, risking oversimplification, individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue. — Edward O. Wilson

Simplicity is a great virtue, but oversimplification can actually be a vice, a sign of laziness. — N. T. Wright

The 'environmental crisis' has happened because the human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature. We have built our household on the assumption that the natural household is simple and can be simply used. We have assumed increasingly over the last five hundred years that nature is merely a supply of 'raw materials,' and that we may safely possess those materials by taking them ... And so we will be wrong if we attempt to correct what we perceive as 'environmental' problems without correcting the economic oversimplification that caused them. — Wendell Berry

All political movements are like this
we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility. — Doris Lessing

since they deal with matters that are the centre of conflict of opposing social groups where the effectiveness of an argument is often contingent upon oversimplification. — Sidin Vadukut

Complex organisms cannot be construed as the sum of their genes, nor do genes alone build particular items of anatomy or behavior by themselves. Most genes influence several aspects of anatomy and behavior as they operate through complex interactions with other genes and their products, and with environmental factors both within and outside the developing organism. We fall into a deep error, not just a harmful oversimplification, when we speak of genes "for" particular items of anatomy or behavior. — Stephen Jay Gould

If we are serious about these big problems, we have got to see that the solutions begin and end with ourselves. Thus we put an end to our habit of oversimplification. If we want to stop the impoverishment of land and people, we ourselves must be prepared to become poorer. If — Wendell Berry

Please, Kate. Suspend your dislike of me for a few moments and listen to what I have to say. It makes sense."
"I don't dislike you. It's an oversimplification. — Ilona Andrews

... we are all guilty of oversimplification at one point or another. It's an enticing idea. It fulfills our need for instant gratification. We find one thing and scream, "Eureka!" We found IT - the one thing that explains it all. The only trouble is that it never works. We are more likely to squeeze gold from our coffee grinder than we are to meet with success when adopting an idea that has been simplified beyond recognition. — Gudjon Bergmann

Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (Logotherapy, indeed, is a meaning-centered psychotherapy.) At the same time, logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus, the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced. To be sure, this kind of statement is an oversimplification; yet in logotherapy the patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life. And to make him aware of this meaning can contribute much to his ability to overcome his neurosis. — Anonymous