Complex Thought Quotes

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

[Language is] really a pretty amazing invention if you think about it. Here I have a very complicated, messy, confused idea in my head. I'm sitting here making grunting sounds and hopefully constructing a similar messy, confused idea in your head that bears some analogy to it.

We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.

What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.

To understand a philosopher requires a philosopher.

Most clear writing is a sign that there is no exploration going on. Clear prose indicates the absence of thought.

Our ideological dilemmas won't ever be solved by machines.

For me, my way to think about everything in fashion is a very baroque way.

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

I don't think you would have any trouble at all in deciding that you are thinking of some event and then visualizing it happening with its consequences, and constructing a rational analysis of it without being able to verbalize it adequately in anything like its full complexity.

To argue that we humans are capable of complex multifarious thought and feeling, whereas the sheep's perception is probably limited by lowly sheepish perceptions, is no more to the point than if I were to slaughter and eat you on the grounds that I am a sophisticated personality able to enjoy Mozart, formal logic and cannibalism, whereas your imaginative world seems confined to True Romances and tinned spaghetti.

You own a watch the invention of the mind, though for a single motion 'tis designed, as well as that which is with greater thought with various springs, for various motions wrought.

Rather than numbing or drowning out the difficult-to-describe but urgently sensed feelings that are part of being human, poetry invites us to tease them out, to draw them into language that is rooted in intricate thought and strange impulse.

a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.

Words are a pretty blunt instrument. There's always going to be slippage between the words and the infinite complexities of a thought. As a writer, I find that frustrating, but as a social animal, I wouldn't have it any other way.

In complex trains of thought signs are indispensable.

Only superficial minds approach an idea with delicacy.

I think that growing up in a crowded continent like Europe with an awful lot of competing claims, ideas... cultures... and systems of thought, we have, perforce, developed a more sophisticated notion of what the word 'freedom' means than I see much evidence of in America.

We are a unique ape. We have language. Other animals have systems of communication that fall far short of that. They don't have the same ability to communicate complicated conditionals and what-ifs and talk about things that are not present.

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.

You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.

The most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the assistance of consciousness.

Only people who are well off can be - complex.

I can't think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one's grammar. It's a kind of intellectual rot that sets in, I'm afraid.