Mark Thompson Quotes

People are always trying to draw simplistic dialectics that can capture things.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Accusations fit on a bumper sticker. The truth is longer.

What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.

There's a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker.

I hate bumper stickers, you can't sum anything up. All you do is paint yourself in some caricaturist corner.

When politicians offer you something for nothing, or something that sounds too good to be true, it's always worth taking a careful second look.

Never forget posterity when devising a policy. Never think of posterity when making a speech.

Everything is more complicated than it looks to most people.

What I really don't like is oversimplification.

To be a fashion critic is easy because you just say, 'I love it, I hate it,' but life is more than love and hate.

Seek simplicity but distrust it.

Our society has lost its taste for complexity and nuance…. We want simple answers …. We have almost disabled our politicians from speaking.

I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity.

The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth.

Intellectuals ... regard over-simplification as the original sin of the mind and have no use for the slogans, the unqualified assertions and sweeping generalizations.

And simple truth miscalled simplicity

Always be skeptical about simplicity.

Some people seem to believe that for each problem there is a solution readily available - a solution that can be promptly achieved by passing a law and voting some money. I think of this as the vending machine concept of social change. Put a coin in the machine and out comes a piece of candy. If there is a social problem, pass a law and out comes a solution.

We fail when we try to give simple answers to complicated problems.

Reality is far more complex and messy than many of the grander themes and explanations would have us believe.

Unfortunately, simplistic framing of problems leads to simplistic answers.

This matter of two sides to every question is bad logic and bad practice: sometimes there are no sides; sometimes there are a hundred.

Political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the occurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the simplification of human life implied in even the best of it purposes.