Complex Topics Quotes

When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid—in which case all comment is superfluous—or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.

There is an incredible appetite out there for in-depth, high-level conversations about what's going on.

While you're playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.

Small minds cannot grasp great subjects.

I think, like, fiction has a place to understand those things that are hardest to understand that non-fiction can't ever get at.

I read kind of serious books about fairly arcane subjects.

Why write if this too easy activity of pushing a pen across paper is not given a certain bullfighting risk and we do not approach dangerous, agile and two-horned topics?

At first glance, the story of the Lusitania doesn't seem like the sort of thing I would take on. I usually like ideas that are a little bit more complex, things that people don't know about - or maybe they once did, but now you bring it to life for them for the first time.

Be more conscious about what you say about foreign policy issues, because they are complicated.

I really did try to write it so that an educated public that cares about issues like this doesn't have to be a lawyer and can read it and understand it.

I think this is one of those issues where the deeper you dig, the murkier it gets - and everyone who has spent a lot of time thinking about these issues.

It's sometimes hard to wrap your head around a big story, and for most of us drawing editorial cartoons 9/11/ 01, that was the biggest story of our professional lives.

Mathematicians do not write for the circulating library.

State of the Culture' is more mature content. We want to go as deep as we can on whatever the subject matter is, we're not there to joke.

I feel it’s important to talk about the complex issues affecting us. And these are complex issues. I think it’s insulting to an audience to make them sit and watch a film and then give them a message in one sentence.

I think neuroscience is obviously very esoteric, but I think there are aspects of it that can absolutely be brought down to the level of an interested 11-, 12-, 13-year-old easily.

The study of an idea is, of necessity, the story of many things.

I read a lot of science books - I love cosmology, quantum theory, particle physics. So my idea of a great read would probably put you directly into a coma.

I like to engage the public because when I was in high school, I had all these questions about anti-matter, higher dimensions and time travel. Every time I went to the library, every time I asked people these questions, I would get some strange looks. Nobody could answer any of these questions.

I had not expected 'A Brief History of Time' to be a best seller. It was my first popular book and aroused a great deal of interest. Initially, many people found it difficult to understand. I therefore decided to try to write a new version that would be easier to follow.

I think the mission for the writer is to tell stories in a compelling way about the stuff that cannot be talked about, that cannot be gotten at with shallow media.

Well, I don't like to get involved in these philosophical issues very much.

The American public's a lot more sophisticated than we all give them credit for. And on complicated issues, I'm going to give them straight answers. And if it takes more than three minutes, I'm going to do it.

In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.

I didn't want the film to be didactic, and this is tough because if you look at the list of issues, you have immigration, the education system, you have the grieving, you have suicide. I think what saved me were two things. I tried to do everything with some level of restraint and let the spectator make up his own mind.