Maggie Gyllenhaal Quotes

Some things I think are very conservative, or very liberal. I think when someone falls into one category for everything, I'm very suspicious. It doesn't make sense to me that you'd have the same solution to every issue.

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

We want to live in the black and white, but we don't. The world is gray. And, I'm always fascinated by people who are clearly, 'This is black and this is white, and that's the way life is.' Life always has something to say about that.

Neither with those nor with the others, with all I agree and dissent; in all part of truth and part of error must be seen.

As a species, we're addicted to the facile discrimination involved in saying that something or phenomenon is either 'this' or 'that' - how much more uncomfortable that it may well be 'the other'.

When we don't have information, we go to the simplest outlook, to black and white. But then we have to lie to ourselves. Black is never as black as you're painting it and white is never as white.

I don't accept the idea that there are two sides to any issue. I think that the middle ground is to be found within most of us.

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.

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

We grow up to respect the gray. Black or white, one or the other, is childish. It represents the worldview of someone who does not know the world.

The world doesn't see a lot of gray. The world sees black and white, and then it understands.

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

Damn all false dichotomies to hell

Frankly, I’m suspicious of anyone who has a strong opinion on a complicated issue.

I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face.

there are two kinds of people in this world : those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.

Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.

Police are not all bad guys. Nobody is all bad guys.

Hard distinctions make bad philosophy.

What I really don't like is oversimplification.

The television industry doesn't like to see the compexity of the world. It prefers simple reporting, with simple ideas: this is white, that's black; this is good, that's bad.

If you have Darwin, Christ and Nietzsche, they're all going to talk at once. You need somebody who listens.

Issues are never simple. One thing I'm proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

It is not productive to see things in simple black and white, and talk in either anti-nuclear or pro-nuclear terms.