Quotes About Complicated Situations

“In his great treatise, Electricity and Magnetism, Clerk Maxwell had remarked that we are often told that in science we must, first of all, investigate the properties of very small local places one after another, and only when this has been done can we permit ourselves to consider how more complicated situations result from what we have found in those elements. This procedure, he added, ignores the fact that many phenomena in nature can only be understood when we inspect not so-called elements but fairly large regions.”

— WolfgangKohler

“A fundamental difference between our culture and Eskimo culture, which can be felt even today in certain situations, is that we have irrevocably separated ourselves from the world that animals occupy. We have turned all animals and elements of the natural world into objects. We manipulate them to serve the complicated ends of our destiny. Eskimos do not grasp this separation easily, and have difficulty imagining themselves entirely removed from the world of animals. For many of them, to make this separation is analogous to cutting oneself off from light or water. It is hard to imagine how to do it.”

— Barry López

“We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes "the world" is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we know every rule, however . . . what we really can explain in terms of those rules is very limited, because almost all situations are so enormously complicated that we cannot follow the plays of the game using the rules, much less tell what is going to happen next. We must, therefore, limit ourselves to the more basic question of the rules of the game. If we know the rules, we consider that we "understand" the world.”

— Richard Rhodes

“Kate, I admit that we aren't in the easiest of situations. But are you always this ... complicated?"
I opened my mouth to say something, but Vincent shook his head, grinning. "Actually, don't answer that. Of course you are. I wouldn't be so totally into you if you weren't.”

— Amy Plum

“You're sixteen years old. Trust me, relationships get a lot more complicated when you're an adult."
"Is this a friends-with-benefits situation?"
"Aren't you a little young to know about friends-with-benefits situations?"
"I didn't say I was partaking in them myself," Zach said. "But shockingly, yes, I have heard of scenarios in which adults engage in intercourse without riding off into the sunset together.”

— Julie James

“I often write about nonreligious people, and I try to find situations where their sense of humanity is restored or discovered. I think you can be a good person in many ways. And I think you often have to be careful that prayer can seem superficial, because it's a very complicated thing to love your neighbor as yourself.”

— Horton Foote

“One big difference between our situation in Myanmar and other situations around the world is that we're not just trying to achieve peace with one group but 11 groups - so it is incredibly complicated as well.”

— Thein Sein

“Men and machines are good at different things. People form plans and make decisions in complicated situations. We are less good at making sense of enormous amounts of data. Computers are exactly the opposite: they excel at efficient data processing but struggle to make basic judgments that would be simple for any human.”

— Peter Thiel

“God's not complicated - He's really not. And He helps people in their everyday life so that they can get better in relationships, in their job situations, in getting through grief.”

— Victoria Osteen

“I'm not a politician because I'm an artist. Politicians have a very easy answer for a very complicated question. I have a very complicated question for what you consider very easy situations.”

— Marjane Satrapi

“Right and wrong as moral principles do not change. They are applicable and reliable determinants whether the situations with which we deal are simple or complicated. There is always a right and wrong to every question which requires our solution.”

— Ezra Taft Benson

“I never blame failure - there are too many complicated situations in life - but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The complexities of life situations are really not as complicated as we tend to experience them.”

— Chogyam Trungpa