Quotes & Sayings About Sophistication

Studios and networks who ignore either shift - whether the increasing sophistication of storytelling, or the constantly shifting sands of technological advancement - will be left behind, — Kevin Spacey

Redneck is: the glorious absence of sophistication — Jeff Foxworthy

Despite all that education and experience can do, I retain a certain level of unsophistication that I cannot eradicate and that my friends find amusing. In fact, I think I sometimes detect conspiratorial plottings among my friends to protect me against my own lack of sophistication. I don't mind. I suspect that I am never quite as unsophisticated as they think I am, but I don't mind. — Isaac Asimov

Don't lie to anyone, but particularly don't lie to millennials. They just know. They can smell it. Be yourself: if you're old, be old. If you don't know anything about pop culture, don't pretend to know anything about pop culture. When you credit teenagers with intelligence and emotional sophistication, they respond intelligently and with emotional sophistication. — John Green

I realize that idealism is out of sync with the cynicism of our age. Skepticism has come to be synonymous with sophistication, and glibness is mistaken for intelligence. In such an atmosphere, why bother aiming high? Far too many people don't. I just want to reassure people to have the courage to persevere, to keep following their hearts even when others scoff. Don't be beaten down by naysayers. Don't let the odds scare you from even trying. — Howard Schultz

If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago ... This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism. — Fritjof Capra

Western "freedom" is a sophisticated form of control. — Bryant McGill

Simple people with less education, sophistication, social ties, and professional obligations seem in general to have somewhat less difficulty in facing this final crisis than people of affluence who lose a great deal more in terms of material luxuries, comfort, and number of interpersonal relationships. It appears that people who have gone through a life of suffering, hard work, and labor, who have raised their children and been gratified in their work, have shown greater ease in accepting death with peace and dignity compared to those who have been ambitiously controlling their environment, accumulating material goods, and a great number of social relationships but few meaningful interpersonal relationships which would have been available at the end of life. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

In the ever accelerating world of the Internet, e-campaigning has gone from a novelty to a necessity in less than a year. With increasing sophistication and urgency, campaigns are using the Web as a bulletin board, advertising medium and organizing tool. — Howard Fineman

I am not one to generalize, but cartoonists, as a group, exhibit a level of social sophistication generally associated with pie fights. In high school, when the future lawyers were campaigning for class president, the future cartoonists were painstakingly altering illustrations in their history books so that Robert E. Lee appeared to be performing an illegal act with his horse. — Dave Barry

Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by regular contact with outdoor growths - animals, trees, sun warmth and free skies - or it will dwindle and pale. — Walt Whitman

I think teenagers bring a lot of intellectual sophistication. They're wrestling with big questions. It's just that, a lot of times they do that separately from adults. — John Green

Somehow, amid all the sophistication and diversions of this world, we forgot the basics: take care of business at home first, and never betray your blood. — Nelson DeMille

The ice tinkles prettily: There's no more inviting sound to her, it's sophistication, like a British accent or that call-and-response of high-heeled shoes on tile. — Rumaan Alam

Dramatic use of color, harmonious design, the interplay of light and shadow across a variety of textures, the portrayal of the figure and other subject matter that reflects the sophistication and beauty I find in nature - all presented from a unique point of view - can only be successfully achieved with a sound command of the painter's craft ... history will determine how successful I have been. — Nelson Shanks

A New York times reporter wrote about David Wilkerson,"He was the model of absolute simplicity, directness and non-sophistication. He sought out gang members, drug addicts and alcoholics with no other weapon than the Bible. He just went out on the streets, mixed with the kids and reasoned with them face to face, often quoting the Bible, and it worked. — Gary Wilkerson

The U.S. has in its stockpiles more nuclear bombs, chemical and biological weapons, more aircraft, rockets and delivery systems in number and sophistication than the rest of the world combined. Included are twenty commissioned Trident II nuclear submarines any one of which could destroy Europe. — Ramsey Clark

So that's our approach. Very simple, and we're really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we're running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let's make it simple. Really simple." Apple's design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. — Walter Isaacson

Lincoln did not admire those who think it is a mark of sophistication to sneer at patriotism. He believed that God has a will for a country and that is honest man should rejoice in the effort to try to remake his country after the Divine pattern, insofar as that pattern is revealed to him. — Elton Trueblood

Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful. — David Zucker

Haagen-Dazs (a clever Scandi-sounding name invented by Americans in 1961) was bought for its Euro-sounding sophistication by the kind of Americans who first bought those Mercs and Beemers, while Ben & Jerry's (now owned by Unilever) brought a post-hippy sensibility to bear. Buyers saw the brand as saying 'all-natural, organic and Fairtrade.' — Peter York

Every age probably regards itself as unique in its sexual sophistication, and if we take Ovid as a typical spokesman we should have to conclude that the keynote of his age was elegance ... Ovid could not possibly have taken himself, nor be taken for, an Ancient. — Rolfe Humphries

With a Latin saying that sophistication is born out of hunger (artificia docuit fames). — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Don't mistake a lack of sophistication for sweetness. — Lorrie Moore

Freedom is the most sophisticated form of control. The best lies use the truth. — Bryant McGill

Joan Crawford is doubtless the best example of the flapper, the girl you see in smart night clubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living. — F Scott Fitzgerald

You talk to them. And look at their faces. Cows have very expressive faces.
I knew her well enough at that point not to be surprised by this. The first few months we'd worked together, I'd found her distant and intimidating, not just because she was Professor Preston's girlfriend, but also because she'd cultivated a very adult reserve that made her seem years older than the rest of us. She was all business at our editorial-board meetings, holding herself conspicuously aloof from the atmosphere of manic jocularity that dominated the proceedings. The more time we spent together, though, the more I'd come to realize that her reserve was rooted as much in shyness as in confidence, and that her quiet sophistication masked a powerful streak of girlish sincerity. — Tom Perrotta

So much talk,talk,more talk and so little walk...What a damper!
Talk comes cheap,walk needs courage...
Understanding something so simple needs courage too..
Simplicity is sophisticated..sophistication needs courage too...
Sophistication is within...Living without needs courage too... — Abha Maryada Banerjee

It seems to be a general rule that sciences begin their development with the unusual. They have to develop considerable sophistication before they interest themselves in the commonplace. — Ralph Linton

Why does any kind of cynicism appeal to people? Because it seems like a mark of maturity, of sophistication, like you've seen everything and know better. Or because putting something down feels like pushing yourself up. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I'll admit it, the grunge trend doesn't really speak to me. I get why other people like it, but it's just not my style. Don't get me wrong, I love layering, but I like it when it is done with a little more polish and sophistication. — Nina Garcia

For all the sophistication of a world in which most of our waking hours are spent consuming or interacting with media, we have scarcely advanced in our understanding of what attention means. — Tom Chatfield

As an animal lover and as a sometime-meat-eater, I've read so much about the emotional sophistication of pigs and cows and sheep that I do think twice when I do still eat them on occasion. — Bryan Fuller

When she realizes that Nigel is having an affair, her first sentiment is satisfaction that she figured it out. Her second is that, despite all the palaver about betrayal, it doesn't feel so terrible.This is pleasing
it demonstrates a certain sophistication. She wonders if his fling might even serve her. In principle, she could leave him without compunction now, though she doesn't wish to. It also frees her from guilt about any infidelities she might wish to engage in. All in all, his affair might prove useful. — Tom Rachman

The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism. Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images. — Camille Paglia

Hugh Hefner and Playboy spoke to the values of an audience that craved individual expression, it wanted to look good and feel good now. Playboy's early mission was "exclusivity, sophistication and taste." While Playboy's iconic logo is those bunny ears, its brand was the association it created in its audience's minds. — Michael R. Drew

After many years of hip-hop as a nation we should have the sophistication to accept that their are distinctions between the corporate manifestation of hip-hop, sold as a commodity and package with sensational race, sex and violent imagery, and the hip-hop culture that kids are living everyday at a local level, which often doesn't dabble in that terrain. — Bakari Kitwana

The amount of sophistication varies according to the quality of the medium, and to the state of the same medium at different times; it must be attributed in the best cases physiologically to the medium, intellectually to the control. — Oliver Joseph Lodge

Among today's adept practitioners, the lie has long since lost its honest function of misrepresenting reality. Nobody believes anybody, everyone is in the know. Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion. The lie, once a liberal means of communication, has today become one of the techniques of insolence enabling each individual to spread around him the glacial atmosphere in whose shelter he can thrive. — Theodor W. Adorno

You want your agony to have a certain sophistication, no? You don't want people to think you're some simpleton who just suddenly realized life is hard, do you? Well, then, first you need to build a solid foundation, and that is what the following chapters are all about: bringing out the little turtlenecked French nihilist in you as a child. You need to cultivate your neuroses. Even if you only have one mental breakdown later in life, this early work will make it easier for you to "lose it" with gusto when the time is right. — Jacqueline Novak

My washing machine overwhelms me with its options and its sophistication. — Uma Thurman

With all due respect to the people who made the motorcycle movies during the '60s, I felt the sophistication level could be a bit higher, and I felt I could raise the bar on that, too. — Larry Bishop

Hindutava's nationalism ignores the rationalist traditions of India, a country in which some of the earliest steps in algebra, geometry, and astronomy were taken, where the decimal system emerged, where early philosophy - secular as well as religious - achieved exceptional sophistication, where people invented games like chess, pioneered sex education, and began the first systematic study of political economy. The Hindu militant chooses instead to present India - explicitly or implicitly - as a country of unquestioning idolaters, delirious fanatics, belligerent devotees, and religious murderers — Amartya Sen

From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. — Sherwood Anderson

Skepticism has come to be synonymous with sophistication, and glibness is mistaken for intelligence. — Howard Schultz

He thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence. — Christopher Hampton

Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary ... — Ernest Hemingway,

I think my style revolves around the philosophy that less is more, that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. That goes for my taste in design and in clothes, and even affects the way I approach music. I'm all about keeping things simple, and minimal, but being able to convey something powerful through that approach. — G-Eazy

Amazingly, much of the best cartoon work was done early on in the medium's history. The early cartoonists, with no path before them, produced work of such sophistication, wit, and beauty that it increasingly seems to me that cartoon evolution is working backward. Comic strips are moving toward a primordial goo rather than away from it ... Not only can comics be more than we're getting today. but the comics already have been more than we're getting today. — Bill Watterson

That to the adolescent is the authentic poetic note and whoever is the first in his life to strike it, whether Tennyson, Keats, Swinburne, Housman or another, awakens a passion of imitation and an affectation which no subsequent refinement or sophistication of his taste can entirely destroy. In my own case it was Hardy in the summer of 1923; for more than a year I read no one else and I do not think that I was ever without one volume or another or the beautifully produced Wessex edition in my hands: I smuggled them into class, carried them about on Sunday walks, and took them up to the dormitory to read in the early morning, though they were far too unwieldy to be read in bed with comfort. In the autumn of 1924 there was a palace revolution after which he had to share his kingdom with Edward Thomas, until finally they were both defeated by Elliot at the battle of Oxford in 1926. — W. H. Auden

I can say it, but it doesn't seem convincing to most people. I can call it an 'injustice,' but that doesn't always sink in either. You have to understand the nature of the culture in New York. Words that are equal to the pain of the poor are pretty easily discredited. A quarter of the truth, stated with lots of indirection, is regarded as more seemly.

Even when people do accept the idea of 'injustice,' there are ways to live with it without it causing you to change a great deal in your life. A mildly embarrassed toleration of injustice is an elemental part of cultural sophistication here. the stile is, 'Oh yes. We know all that. So tell us something new.' There's a kind of cultivated weariness in this. Talking about injustice, I am told, is 'tiresome' unless you do it in a way that sounds amusing. — Jonathan Kozol

Heir imaginativeba ckground. Every philosopher, in addition to the formal system which heoffers to the world, has another, much simpler, of which he may be quite unaware. If he is aware of it,he probably realizes that it won't quite do; he therefore conceals it, and sets forth something more sophisticated, which he believes because it is like his crude system, but which he asks others to
accept because he thinks he has made it such as cannot be disproved. The sophistication comes in
by way of refutation of refutations, but this alone will never give a positive result: it shows,at
best, that a theory maybe true, not that it must be. The positive result, however little the
philosopher may realize it, is due to his imaginative preconceptions,or to what Santayana calls
animal faith. — Bertrand Russell

I know as a critic I'm required to have a well-armored heart. I must be a cynical wise guy to show my great sophistication. No pushover, me. — Roger Ebert

When I write in Hebrew, I don't look for sophistication in music; it's just pure emotion that comes out. — Yael Naim

Let me put it more artistically, with greater sophistication:
They left us in the toilet. In the deepest pile of shit. And we're coated in the crappy residue of their desicions. But that does not mean we are the one who pooped, Moritz. And neither are we the poop.

Never think that. We're not the poop. — Leah Thomas

Yet simplicity has been difficult to implement in modern life because it is against the spirit of a certain brand of people who seek sophistication so they can justify their profession. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Society expects man to be a passive social animal who believes like the People of the Field in "Jurgen" that "to do what you always have done" and "what is expected of you" are the twin rules of life. This, is course, is not true. The wanton crucifixion of impulses, the unnecessary blocking and frustration of the drives and urges, are an evil that reflects itself in sophistication, ennui and boredom, dissatisfaction, melancholy, fatigue, anxiety and neurosis. — Abraham Myerson

Abbey was born to sophistication, whereas I was more Barbara than Buckingham Palace Windsor. — Samantha Tonge

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions? — Joni Mitchell

In 1960, in Blackburn v. Alabama, the Court said, "Coercion can be mental as well as physical." In reviewing whether a confession was psychologically coerced by the police, the following factors are crucial: (1) the length of the interrogation, (2) whether it was prolonged in nature, (3) when it took place, day or night, with a strong suspicion around nighttime confessions, and (4) the psychological makeup - intelligence, sophistication, education, and so on - of the suspect. — John Grisham

The spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication. — George Santayana

There is more sophistication and less sense in New York than anywhere else on the globe. — Elbert Hubbard

There was a real sophistication and elegance to (Batman: The Animated Series). It certainly appealed to kids but had a depth that really made it fascinating and interesting to watch for adult fans. I think visually, it was stylistically stunning. — Jim Lee

I tend to think that there is a sophistication to everything at 'Saturday Night Live,' including the sketches. — Fred Armisen

Self-consciousness is, from a naturalistic point of view (in this case neurobiological), not more than a degree of sophistication of neural processes. The emergence of self-conscious states is not a drastic, extravagant, earth-shaking phenomenon. — Istvan Aranyosi

The devil depends on a dark secret chance, but God does it now before your own eyes. — Michael Bassey Johnson

I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living. — Lin Yutang

No matter what your cultural sophistication or what language you speak, everyone can understand images. — Tibor Kalman

There's just a deeper level of sophistication in the writing of female characters on TV. — Vera Farmiga

The most important thing about reading is not the level of sophistication of the books on your shelf. There is no prerequisite reading regimen for being a bookworm. — Lauren Leto

Being a Chicano in Hollywood, my experience is that you're not given credit for any sophistication ... You're just kind of some guy that just crossed the border, you know, on the back of a truck and that's it. — Cheech Marin

I was just finishing up my drink then I was off to get the night bus.' Carol grinned. 'Your sophistication never ceases to amaze me. What's wrong with a taxi?' 'You get a better class of nutter on the night bus. I blend in perfectly — Val McDermid

To my mind and ear, there is simply nothing that compares to the musical sophistication of a late Beethoven, Bartok, Schubert or Brahms work for minimal forces. — Leonard Slatkin

Investments in greater email marketing sophistication often lead to even higher returns, not diminishing returns. — Chad White

With a woman of sophistication, class and modesty and refinement, I become a totally tongue-tied buffoon. I can't even look her straight in the face. — Iain Glen

The ultimate sophistication of subversion is to take over the government, not by unlawful but by lawful means. — Brian Crozier

Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies. — Annie Dillard

WHY DO YOU THINK LEAN EFFORTS FAIL---PROVIDED THOSE HAVE NO ENSURED HI-FI SOPHISTICATION TAG ACCORDING TO MODERN CENTURY GLOBAL WALK SPIRIT IN EVERY ANGLE OF FOR-THOUGHT TO KEEP EAGLE EYE ENSURENCE IN TO CHALLENGING FUTURE. — Various

As our economy faces up to potential labour shortages due to our ageing population and as it moves to a new level of sophistication to compete with the rest of the world, we're going to need every Australian on board pulling their weight, rejoining the workforce, gaining new skills. Writing off individuals and communities suffering from poverty just creates a dead weight for our economy to drag along. — Julia Gillard

A sense of religion is something one is born with, like a musical ear. One can develop it, cultivate it, enrich it, but if one hasn't got its seed to begin with, no powers of the intellect, no sophistication of 'evidence' can awaken it. — Svetlana Alliluyeva

Sophistication is upscale conformity. — James Richardson

If you think of the typical Herbalife distributor and their level of sophistication, to this day I still don't understand the marketing plan - true story. — Bill Ackman

What I argue is that talk of knowledge plays an important role in theories within cognitive ethology. The idea is this. First, one sees cognitive ethologists arguing that we need to attribute propositional attitudes to some animals in order to explain the sophistication of their cognitive achievements. — Hilary Kornblith

I was surprised by the level of sophistication of the Special Operation forces. Among them were anthropologists and PhD candidates. I felt because I understand the patterns of nineteenth-century jihad in West Africa that I was definitely going to be more advanced than they were in comprehending what the militant rallying cry was. — Eliza Griswold

Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right. — Anne Lamott

They displayed a sophistication in warfare as good as anything he had ever encountered, and he had been trained by the best fighters in the universe then seasoned in battles where only the superior few survived. — Frank Herbert

He would always be like that, my grandfather, always searching for that new start, always running away from the familiar. By the time the family arrived in Hawaii, his character would have been fully formed, I think - the generosity and eagerness to please, the awkward mix of sophistication and provincialism, the rawness of emotion that could make him at once tactless and easily bruised. — Barack Obama

Now domestication and sophistication of men by women are the norm and acceptable by society, but they are terrible for manhood. — Debasish Mridha

The problems of our day loom ominously before us. Surrounded by the sophistication of modern living, we look heavenward for that unfailing sense of direction, that we might chart and follow a wise and proper course. He whom we call our Heavenly Father will not leave our sincere petition unanswered. — Thomas S. Monson

I love every aspect of the show. I've been very involved. It was important for me to be very involved in, you know, all of the creative elements. And so, you know, it - David, you know, being brought onto the show, you know, that - I always just wanted to make sure that we maintained the sophistication and intelligence of (the) - and the comedy that we were able to establish in the mini-series. — Debra Messing

If you're gonna use simile, analogy, metaphor, be descriptive and have some flowery adjectives and a few odd nouns and some engaging bits of dialogue or sentiment, then you're sort of writing a novel, really. But rock lyrics are not really known for their sophistication. — Ian Anderson

The current social organization is a sophisticated lie and invisible prison without bars. — Bryant McGill

Spiritual maturity is measured not by the sophistication of a person's opinions, but by their genuineness and the courage necessary to express and maintain them. — Caroline Myss

Chinese were bornwith an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplanted too young, these qualities ripened in them ... If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy. — Pearl S. Buck

Sophistication is not science people, simplicity is. — Abhijit Naskar

For members of a traditional society where many traditions have been discredited, an interest in modernity can result in a restless sophistication. Mehmet Ertegun seems not to have been a restless man. — George W. S. Trow

I always imagined that magically, at some point, I would settle into this very easy and refined sophistication, but it turns out that who you are at eleven is pretty much who you are at 27, so I don't know how much I've learned over the years. — Mackenzie Davis

I'm not opposed to aging - even though society is kinder on men than women when it comes to getting old. How can I look at aging as the enemy? It happens whether I like it or not and no one is set apart from growing old; it comes to us all. Youth passes from everyone, so why deny it? I'm proud of my age. I'm proud that I've survived this planet for as long as I have, and should I end up withered, wrinkled and with a lifetime of great wisdom, I'll trade the few years of youth for the sophistication of a great mind ... for however long it lasts. — Donna Lynn Hope