104 Complex Systems Quotes
Following is our list of complex systems quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about complex problems.
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Famous Complex Systems Quotes
To manage a system effectively, you might focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately. — Russell L. Ackoff
Scale often has surprising emergent properties. — Sam Altman
...no matter how complex or affluent, human societies are nothing but subsystems of the biosphere, the Earth's thin veneer of life, which is ultimately run by bacteria, fungi and green plants. — Vaclav Smil
nonlinear interactions almost always make the behavior of the aggregate more complicated than would be predicted by summing or averaging. — John Henry Holland
Small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos can shift the whole system to a higher order. — Barbara Marx Hubbard
The more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be. — Fritjof Capra
The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology. — E. F. Schumacher
A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without the aim, there is no system. — W. Edwards Deming
The whole is more than the sum of its parts. — Aristotle
I believe that our very survival depends upon us becoming better systems thinkers. — Margaret J. Wheatley
No phenomenon can be isolated, but has repercussions through every aspect of our lives. We are learning that we are a fundamental part of nature's ecosystems. — Arthur Erickson
The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple. — Alice Munro
The main character of any living system is openness. — Ilya Prigogine
We seem to inhabit a universe made up of a small number of elements-particles-bits that swirl in chaotic clouds, occasionally clustering together in geometrically logical temporary configurations. — Timothy Leary
True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed. — Tom Robbins
Short Complex Systems Quotes
- The complexity of the world cannot be reduced down to simple narratives or binary thinking. — Bret Weinstein
- All is connected ... no one thing can change by itself. — Paul Hawken
- Our identities are open systems, and so are our lives. — Adam Grant
- Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems. — George Eliot
Complex Systems Quotes
Finally, as the digestive canal is a complex system, a series of separate chemical laboratories, I cut the connections between them in order to investigate the course of phenomena in each particular laboratory; thus I resolved the digestive canal into several separate parts. — Ivan Pavlov
A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding. — William Gibson
Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems. — Jurgen Habermas
We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it. — Roger Penrose
The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to a significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built. — Niklaus Wirth
There is no publication in the scientific literature - in prestigious journals, specialty journals, or books - that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred. — Michael Behe
What I try to do in the book is to trace the chain of relationships running from elementary particles, fundamental building blocks of matter everywhere in the universe, such as quarks, all the way to complex entities, and in particular complex adaptive system like jaguars. — Murray Gell-Mann
No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into its system of laws. — Pat Conroy
The Founders were not democrats and socialists..., but conservatives who had a healthy distrust of political passions and who devised a complex system designed to frustrate the schemes of social redeemers and others convinced of their own invincible virtue. — David Horowitz
It is clear to all that the animal organism is a highly complex system consisting of an almost infinite series of parts connected both with one another and, as a total complex, with the surrounding world, with which it is in a state of equilibrium. — Ivan Pavlov
Complex Problems Quotes
Men will surrender to the spirit of the age. They will say that if they had lived in our day, faith would be simple and easy. But in their day, they will say, things are complex; the Church must be brought up to date and made meaningful to the day's problems. — Anthony of Padua
When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. — Steve Jobs
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. — H. L. Mencken
Moreover, such a body freed from nervous tension and over-fatigue is the ideal shelter provided by nature for housing a well-balanced mind that is always fully capable of successfully meeting all of the complex problems of modern living. — Joseph Pilates
Even the most complex problem is resolved in the end. Because if there's a question, there also is an answer. — Kim Joon
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them. — Laurence J. Peter
The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution. — Anton Chekhov
Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice. We are uncommonly and marvelously intricate in thought and action, our problems are most complex and, too often, silently borne. — Alice Childress
The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society. — Vince Lombardi
Human Complexity Quotes
One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings. — Franklin A. Thomas
Strategy-making is an immensely complex process involving the most sophisticated, subtle, and at times subconscious of human cognitive and social processes. — Henry Mintzberg
It’s a contradiction that we all deal with. — Naval Ravikant
The most important kind of human communication happens when our brains send information to other brains through complex patterns of air pressure waves. Have you ever stopped and thought about how incredible that is? — Tim Urban
Each of us is leading a difficult life, and when we meet people we are seeing only a tiny part of the thinnest veneer of their complex, troubled existences. To practise anything other than kindness towards them, to treat them in any way save generously, is to quietly deny their humanity. — Derren Brown
I am unable to think of any critical, complex human activity that could be safely reduced to a simple summary equation. — Jerome Powell
The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe. — Voltaire
Coffee has ... expand[ed] humanity's working-day from twelve to a potential twenty-four hours. The tempo, the complexity, the tension of modern life, call for something that can perform the miracle of stimulating brain activity, without evil, habit-forming after-effects. — Margaret Meagher
It is not just that science and technology are possible means of great human satisfaction, as well as a matrix of complex dominations. Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. — Donna J. Haraway
Let us not forget that the reasons for human actions are usually incalculably more complex and diverse than we tend to explain them later, and are seldom clearly manifest. — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Systems Thinking Quotes
Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can't afford the time to think. — Noam Chomsky
The Toyota style is not to create results by working hard. It is a system that says there is no limit to people's creativity. People don't go to Toyota to 'work' they go there to 'think'. — Taiichi Ohno
When your world falls apart and you're left with just yourself, you're forced to discover who you are without all the beliefs, expectations, views, & self-image provided by some teacher or system. The calculating mind gives way to the intuitive mind, Knowing without Thinking. — Gabrielle Roth
You assist an administration most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil administration never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good man will therefore resist an evil system or administration with his whole soul. — Mahatma Gandhi
The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions. — Noam Chomsky
Nothing-was more degrading than for a woman to have to marry for a home. Love should be the sole reason. Surely those with a brain-to think, eyes to see and a mind-to reason must realise that the capitalist system must cease and a co-operative system prevail in its place. — Vida Goldstein
As soon as you start to tell yourself in your perception that you can't do something anymore, then your biological system will adjust to prove you right. You will not do what you think you can't do. — Bruce H. Lipton
I think the future of psychotherapy and psychology is in the school system. We need to teach every child how to rarely seriously disturb himself or herself and how to overcome disturbance when it occurs. — Albert Ellis
Whether you're thinking about trying a fasting system for preventive reasons or as a treatment, the doctor should be involved, there are many factors that must be considered, like your current diet, or whether you have diabetes or a metabolic disorder. — Valter Longo
We still don’t have a clue about what’s going on in the human brain. We have theories; we just don’t know for sure. We can’t build an electrical circuit, digital or analogue or other, that mimics the biological system. We can’t emulate the behavior. One day in the future, we think we can. — Annie Jacobsen
People Writing About Complex Systems
More Complex Systems Quotes
Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. Problems are extracted from messes by analysis. Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes. — Russell L. Ackoff
We have been quick to assume rights to use water but slow to recognize obligations to preserve and protect it... In short, we need a water ethic-a guide to right conduct in the face of complex decisions about natural systems we do not and cannot fully understand. — Sandra Postel
Everyone in a complex system has a slightly different interpretation. The more interpretations we gather, the easier it becomes to gain a sense of the whole. — Margaret J. Wheatley
The only way to know how a complex system will behave-after you modify it-is to modify it and see how it behaves. — George E. P. Box
The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological - social - psychological - economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch. — Donella Meadows
The human brain is generally regarded as a complex web of adaptations built into the nervous system, even though no one knows how. — Michael Gazzaniga
Since natural selection requires a function to select, an irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would have to arise as an integrated unit for natural selection to have anything to act on. — Michael Behe
Many individuals and organization units contribute to every large decision, and the very problem of centralization and decentralization is a problem of arranging the complex system into an effective scheme. — Herbert Simon
It is important to understand that while oxytocin may be the hub of the evolution of the social brain in mammals, it is part of a very complex system. Part of what it does is act in opposition to stress hormones, and in that sense release of oxytocin feels good - as stress hormones and anxiety do not feel good. — Patricia Churchland
A rough rule in life is that an organization foolish in one way in dealing with a complex system is all too likely to be foolish in another. — Charlie Munger
Not one example of significant self-generation or self-organization can be found in the entire realm of nature.... Without causation, nothing happens and without organization by an intelligent being, systems tend to lower and lower levels of complexity. — Hugh Ross
The general problem with ambitious systems is complexity. [...] it is important to emphasize the value of simplicity and elegance, for complexity has a way of compounding difficulties. — Fernando J. Corbato
God has given to every one of us more than fourteen billion cells and connections in our brain. Now why would God give us such a complex organ system unless He expects us to use it? — Benjamin Carson
Evolutionary biologists have been able to pretend to know how complex biological systems originated only because they treated them as black boxes. Now that biochemists have opened the black boxes and seen what is inside, they know the Darwinian theory is just a story, not a scientific explanation. — Phillip E. Johnson
The internet is the most complex system that humans have ever invented. And with every internet enabled operation that we've seen so far, all of these offensive operations, we see knock on effects. We see unintended consequences. — Edward Snowden
What is important is that complex systems, richly cross-connected internally, have complex behaviours, and that these behaviours can be goal-seeking in complex patterns. — William Ross Ashby
The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex. — Adam Smith
Artistic simplicity is more complex than artistic complexity for it arises via the simplification of the latter and against its backdrop or system. — Yuri Lotman
I believe the evidence strongly supports common descent. But the root question remains unanswered: What has caused complex systems to form? — Michael Behe
There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet — Adrienne Rich
It's a mistake to think that poor people get the benefit from the welfare system. It's a total fraud. Most welfare go to the rich of this country: the military-industrial complex, the bankers, the foreign dictators, it's totally out of control. — Ron Paul
In my daily work, I work on very large, complex, distributed systems built out of many Python modules and packages. The focus is very similar to what you find, for example, in Java and, in general, in systems programming languages. — Guido van Rossum
The World is a very complex system. It is easy to have too simple a view of it, and it is easy to do harm and to make things worse under the impulse to do good and make things better. — Kenneth E. Boulding
The human body is the most complex system ever created. The more we learn about it, the more appreciation we have about what a rich system it is. — Bill Gates
A terrific, stimulating book...Ramalingam clearly and engagingly shows how the use of complex adaptive systems thinking can significantly strengthen and enhance the impacts and effectiveness of global foreign aid. — Jerry Sabloff
Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century. — Noam Chomsky
Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
When discussing complex systems like brains and other societies, it is easy to oversimplify: I call this Occam's lobotomy. — I. J. Good
What seems interesting to me is to reproduce in the figurative representation of an object the whole complex system of impressions we receive in the normal course of everyday life, the way this affects our feelings and the shape it takes in our memory; and it is to this that I have always applied myself. — Jean Dubuffet
Lenelle Moïse's poems render the abstract - policy, disaster, history, diaspora - specific. Her words make the political not just personal, but corporeal: the beautiful system of the human body as canvas and subject, perfect in all its attendant complications and complexity, and still ruled, undeniably, by a warm, beating heart. — Erin McKeown
Modern research has shown that your eye-brain system is thousands of times more complex and powerful than had previously been estimated, and that with proper training you can quickly reap the benefits of this enormous potential. — Tony Buzan
The brain weighs only three pounds, yet it is the most complex object in the solar system. — Michio Kaku
Systems are complex, so controlling an attack and achieving a desired level of damage may be harder than using physical weapons. — Dorothy Denning
most economists, like doctors, are reluctant to make predictions, and those who make them are seldom accurate. The economy, like the human body, is a highly complex system whose workings are not thoroughly understood. — Alice Rivlin
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