Complexity of Issues Quotes

The nation-state has become too small for the big problems of life and too big for the small problems.

Nothing is black or white.

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

A lot of the issues that I see, it is not an either-or situation.

The issues at the core of our national debates are more complicated than can be explained in soundbites and slogans by talking-heads and special guests. The media caters to our TL;DR-afflicted nation with over-simplified lowest common denominator journalism which completely fails us when the issues are not black-or-white or when the answers require caveats. Nuanced discussions don’t make attention grabbing headlines or dramatic journalistic copy so media reporting disproportionately accentuates extreme perspectives to create the conflict-drama that drives viewers and readership. The resulting rhetoric polarizes rather than convinces.

I feel like people expect me to give them easy answers, but there aren't really easy answers. There are only harder questions. And unless we get to the harder questions part, about what this conversation is really about...of course I want an immigration bill to pass. I want people to have a driver's license and work permits and green cards and passports. But this conversation transcends this bill. We're not going to have a perfect bill. This is politics. I feel like my job is instead of giving people easy answers, my job is to actually to ask people to probe deeper.

You know, one of the things I like about this world, or at least I like about the way we're presenting this world, is these issues are terribly complicated - not nearly as black and white as we're led to believe.

The purpose of a good education is to show you that there are three sides to a two-sided story.

She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought.

The fact is, there aren't just two sides to any issue, there's almost always a range of responses, and "it depends" is almost always the right answer in any big question.

Science has not solved problems, only shifted the points of problems.

Broadcasters or politicians or writers who think that they are respecting Struggle Street, the battlers, by dumbing things down into one-line sound bites are not respecting them, they are treating them with contempt. It's our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them.

From where many of us in the U.K. sit, American politics is hopelessly polarized. All kinds of issues get bundled up into two great heaps. The rest of the world, today and across the centuries, simply doesn't see things in this horribly oversimplified way.

Because one cause is bad does not make the opposing cause good.

I don't think it's the job of theatre at the moment to provide political propaganda; that would be simplistic. We have to explore our situation further before we will understand it.

Americans are inclined to see the world and foreign affairs in black and white.

Reality is complex, but the politicians and the public demand simple answers.

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