Oversimplified Quotes & Sayings

If I could offer a single prescription for the survival of America, and particularly black America, it would be to restore the family. And if you asked me how to do it, my answer - doubtlessly oversimplified - would be; save the boys. — William Raspberry

Oversimplified perhaps, this in essence is the problem known to nineteenth-century diplomacy as the Eastern Question. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Since her landmark 'Tapestry,' Carole King has both oversimplified and over elaborated that masterful album's style until her music has become something more overtly but less effectively personal. — Jon Landau

There is no surer basis for fanaticism than bad history, which is invariably history oversimplified. — Diarmaid MacCulloch

The connections between people and land are dangerously oversimplified and mainly technological. — Wendell Berry

I'm drawing a diagram of what time looks like if you're looking straight into it - like looking down a tunnel and seeing a circle, if the tunnel were an angry ten-dimensional crab, which is what, in vastly oversimplified terms, we mean by the human word time. — Austin Grossman

The Icesave matter is complex and it is understandable that the issue has been oversimplified by many. Unfortunately some of the basic facts of the matter have been unilaterally interpreted, and sometimes distorted, giving rise to unjustified criticism of the conduct of the Icelandic authorities. — Johanna Siguroardottir

It is a fact of life that oversimplified accounts of the development of science are often necessary in its teaching. Most scientific progress is a messy, complex and slow process; only with the hindsight of an overall understanding of a phenomenon can a story be told pedagogically rather than chronologically. This necessitates the distilling of certain events and personalities from the melee: those who are deemed to have made the most important contributions. It is inevitable therefore that the many smaller or less important advances scattered randomly across hundreds of years of scientific history tend to be swept up like autumn leaves into neat piles, on top of which sit larger-than-life personalities credited with taking a discipline forward in a single jump. Sometimes this is perfectly valid, and one cannot deny the genius of an Aristotle, a Newton, a Darwin or an Einstein. But it often leaves behind forgotten geniuses and unsung heroes. — Jim Al-Khalili

Theory and knowledge remain suspect, not because of inherent worthlessness, but because of their historic isolation from action. Without theoretical orientation, however, action is vulnerable to oversimplified and glib imitativeness-even mimicry-and to the use of the gimmick. — Erving Polster

When you get to an event like the Olympic Games, you can put too much pressure on yourself. — Eric Shanteau

As the actor, you can't be worried about the scene that you're going to playing two days from now. You think about what's going on, right now and in the moment. That's what you worry about. Everything is right then and there. In the end, all of the pieces come together, thanks to the editing and James Gunn. — Michael Rooker

Mysticism, poor mysticism! When it is underestimated and oversimplified, it comes down from its original sphere and stands beside religion. — Sri Chinmoy

Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art-and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified explanations. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Making LDL the "bad cholesterol" oversimplified the science considerably, but it managed to salvage two decades' worth of research, and to justify why physicians had bothered to measure total cholesterol in their patients. — Gary Taubes

You looked like a half-literate moron in that letter, like an anti-intellectual jackanapes trying to stampede his way into power with all the finesse of a lovestruck buffalo. — Patrick Ness

Don't worry if you're having a hard time following this oversimplified explanation of physics' most challenging problem. For most of us, understanding special relativity is a little like true love: We should consider ourselves lucky if we can grasp hold of it for even one fleeting moment. — Seth Mnookin

Oversimplifying is the first grave mistake we make when confronted by complexity; overconfidence is the second. And there is a third: based on our overconfidence in our oversimplified conclusions, we overreact. — Ted Cadsby

It is too late if we wait until the moment of temptation before making our decision. — Nathan Eldon Tanner

If my books appear to a reader to be oversimplified, then you shouldn't read them: You're not the audience! — Malcolm Gladwell

How do people make the judgments and how do they assign decision weights? We start from two simple answers, then qualify them. Here are the oversimplified answers: People overestimate the probabilities of unlikely events. People overweight unlikely events in their decisions. — Daniel Kahneman

To some extent we are all the prisoners of stereotypes; we see each other in terms of distorted and oversimplified images. Better communication in the realm of ideas, of the arts, and of science can help refashion these false images. And by seeing more clearly we may act more wisely. — Chester Bowles

Good had defeated evil, people proclaimed, a justification for atrocities best left forgotten. They would cling to this oversimplified truth while trading pats on the back and placing flowers on graves. — Kristina McMorris

A black telephone
receiver was stuffed in the small space between his ear and his
shoulder; he motioned for them to sit in the stiff wooden armchairs in
front of his desk. Moments later he hung up the phone, the base
ringing lightly from the impact.
"So you're still in a mess, aren't you?" he said. — M.L. Terese

These friends represent an oversimplified "orthodoxy," based on a misreading of the wisdom tradition to the effect that all troubles are punishments for wrongdoing. Their "comfort" consists largely of applying this message to Job, urging him to identify his sin and repent of it. — Anonymous

To Vic and other kids his age, the past didn't exist except as a quick, oversimplified Wikipedia snippets, that ultimately didn't matter because they weren't now.

Dolores wonders if that is all she really is, a little piece of now, relentlessly pushed forward by time, trying desperately to look back over her shoulder to see what the past could possibly tell her, but caught in a rush that refused to stand still long enough for her to hear what it had to say. — David Hontiveros

He'd lived for those letters, he remembered. He'd imagined meeting and marrying Miss Sarah Matthews, and bringing his bride up to meet his friend at Beaumont Hall. But the visit was not to be - Jeff died, despite Nolan's care and desperate prayers, and once he was gone, there was no real reason for Nolan to remain at Beaumont Hall. The "Spinsters' Club" had invited him and a couple other candidates to come for Founders' Day. He'd ridden southward, knowing Sarah Matthews would be as beautiful in person as she was interesting in her letters, and hoping she would not hate him because he was a Yankee. — Laurie Kingery

Oversimplified moral certainties - always requiring hostility, always potentially violent - isolate us from mercy, pity, peace, and love and leave us lonely and dangerous. — Wendell Berry

The narrative fallacy, Bezos explained, was a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan to describe how humans are biologically inclined to turn complex realities into soothing but oversimplified stories. — Anonymous

This is what helps me sleep at night. Knowing that one of us stood up and refused to take it. One of us said, Fuck you, and struck back.
One of us became the wolf and bloodied her jaws so that others can live without fear. — Leah Raeder

Burton Cummings joining the Guess Who in January 1966 changed my life forever. It's been a rocky affiliation, no doubt. One journalist once described our relationship as the longest running soap opera in Canadian history. That may be a bit oversimplified. — Randy Bachman

People in my situation get to read about themselves whether they want to or not. It's generally wrong. Or oversimplified - which is sometimes useful. — Gore Vidal

If he's forgotten me, I'll make him remember me. I'll make him want me again. — Margaret Mitchell

I don't want to make a movie for 100,000 fans that nobody else in the world sees, because I don't think that's good for the character. — Timothy Miller

From where many of us in the U.K. sit, American politics is hopelessly polarized. All kinds of issues get bundled up into two great heaps. The rest of the world, today and across the centuries, simply doesn't see things in this horribly oversimplified way. — N. T. Wright

Thank goodness I've saved my money. — Kyle Chandler

Professional communications had always been about the attempt to generate memes, to make a message viral; abnorms just took that to a higher level. Back when he'd been a DAR agent, Cooper had read a brief arguing memetics was the most dangerous gift. As politicians had long known, people preferred short, catchy answers to complex ones, even if the short answers were oversimplified to the point of ridiculousness. Phrases like "old-world thinking" could be as devastating as a bomb, and much farther ranging. — Marcus Sakey

There are people who are born superficial ... They prefer not to have to deal with more than a limited number of oversimplified ideas - they prefer the book reviews to the books, the headlines and the leading paragraph to the full report, the generalization to the facts, and the negative to the positive. — Gwethalyn Graham

It is a grave error for historians of literature to interpret the national spirit of the age in an oversimplified manner, ignoring the complexity of various cultural and life processes. Instead of using their imagination, they try to read the future by observing the hands of a clock which is still busy measuring the past. — Mieczyslaw Jastrun

The automatism of man is overcome, in the words of Dhun'Nun, by aiming for 'being as you were, where you were, before you were'. — Idries Shah