Complex Understanding Quotes

There's no such thing as an expert on Russia—only various degrees of ignorance.

How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?

The great challenge facing us today is to learn once again how to talk to one another, not simply how to generate and consume information. The latter is a tendency which our important and influential modern communications media can encourage. Information is important, but it is not enough. All too often things get simplified, different positions and viewpoints are pitted against one another, and people are invited to take sides, rather than to see things as a whole.

We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.

It was complicated. I understood it, mostly, but I had to think a little sideways to do it.

Human thinking depends on metaphor. We understand new and complex things in relation to the things we already know... once you pick a metaphor it will guide your thinking.

If you want to visualize something in its fullness you have to look at every perspective and every angle, and that means - sometimes uncomfortably - looking at things you don't want to look at.