Freeman Dyson Quotes

Things are always more complicated than most people believe.

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.

In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a war story nothing is ever absolutely true.

The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.

Some of my ancestors fought in the American Revolution. A few more wore red coats, a few wore blue coats, and the rest wore no coats at all. We never did figure out who won that war.

People are afraid of detail and complexity.

Nothing is ever cut-and-dried. There's anguish behind everything.

The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever.

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.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There's no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

There is no simple answer to what I think.

Reality is contradictory. And it's paradoxical.

World history is tragic.

If everything isn't black and white, I say, 'Why the hell not?'

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Today, however, the world is deeply troubled everywhere and disorder seems endless. As the disasters that humankind may suffer are immeasurable, we sincerely hope to bring about a cessation of hostilities and a restoration of peace, and have therefore ordered the government to ally with Germany and Italy, nations which share the same intentions as ourselves ….

He who wars, walks in a mist, through which the keenest eyes cannot always discern the right path.

History, as well as life itself, is complicated; neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.

… a world without certainty can be richer, in all senses of the word, than a world with false convictions.

It's impossible to know what happens in the fog of war.

I love telling stories, but I also am more aware now of how complex reality is and how difficult it is to really explain what happened or how I felt. Maybe that sometimes makes me a little bit vague, because I don't want to really put my finger on anything or set it in stone.

I don't ever want to tie a song in a little bow. Life doesn't work that way, and war doesn't ever work that way.

The truth is complicated, and few people are actually monsters.

In general, I like contradictions and complex situations.

War is the realm of uncertainty; three-quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. ... war is the realm of chance. No other human activity gives it greater scope; no other has such incessant and varied dealings with this intruder. Chance makes everything more uncertain and interferes with the whole course of events.