Josephus Quotes

Complexity and innovation are not always good things.

If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.

As beautiful as simplicity is, it can become a tradition that stands in the way of exploration.

In my latter years I've decided that there's too much to keep track of when you go into the lying game. That becomes stressful and it's not for me anymore.

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

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

There was a feeling during the years of George W. Bush's presidency that his gracelessness as well as his appetite for war were linked to his impatience with complexity. He acted 'from the gut,' and was economical with the truth until it disappeared.

Not every advance is progress. Not every new thing is better for us humanly.

What is dishonestly got vanishes in profligacy.

For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!' I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered. I liked white better,' I said. White!' he sneered. 'It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.' In which case it is no longer white,' said I. 'And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.' - Gandalf

For I see that then I was still all in a state of innocence, but that innocence, once lost, is lost forever.

Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler - for the liar - than it really is, or ought to be.

"If we had not created a set of people against another the world would have been corrupt", and "against" here means two things: Against in the fact that they are challenging you with their diversity, challenging your intelligence and to challenge is not negative, it can be very positive depending on how you are challenged.

It is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

The World requires at least ten years to understand a new idea, however important or simple it may be.

The human mind thinks but to complicate. As soon as one problem is solved, that solution introduces new complications, other problems that perhaps did not exist before. That was one of my great troubles when I was younger, I invented many things that were very fine, but always I was getting into complications. I have had to work very hard to overcome that.

It is best, if possible, to deceive no one; for he that ... begins by deceiving others, will end ... by deceiving himself.

The success of any trap lies in its fundamental simplicity. The reverse trap by the nature of its single complication must be swift and simpler still.

It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple.

Anyone who does not understand the utter cynicism of politics does not understand politics.

Cynicism was a one-way path, and once taken the way back was lost forever.

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

I would gladly chastise those who represent things as different from what they are. Those who steal property or make counterfeit money are punished, and those ought to be still more severely dealt with who steal away or falsify the good name of a prince.

Yes and no are soon said, but give much to think over.

Let the guilty bury the innocent, and let no one change the evidence