Simplistic Solutions Quotes

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.

The key ingredient of politics is the idea that all of society's ills can be cured politically. It's like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried.

Pat answers to complex problems are the hallmark of intellectual mediocrity

Most of the suspicion of intellectuals in politics springs from the belief, not entirely false, that, owing to a strong desire to see life in some simple, symmetrical fashion, they put too much faith in the beneficent results of applying directly to life conclusions obtained by operations in some theoretical sphere.

Our society has lost its taste for complexity and nuance…. We want simple answers …. We have almost disabled our politicians from speaking.

Science fiction has traditionally been economically naive, with a strong libertarian streak, which I think is like a crude Leninism. That's attractive because it could be used to explain everything, and if only we lived by its tenets, everything would be perfect.

Overly simplistic suggestions that we ban people from entering this country, based on religion, or ban people from an entire region of the world is counterproductive. It will not work. We need to build bridges to communities, to American-Muslim communities right now, to encourage them to help us in our homeland security efforts.

As a rule, [populism] is done for the sake of political expediency by those who do not care about the consequences, who do not think even one step ahead, who do not want to think and do not intend to honour their commitments.

The principle of Sturgeon's Razor states that the simplest answer to any problem is 90% crap.

Look at the European Parliament. There are a lot of people who are looking for simplistic solutions, for - who are sort of preaching policies of - well, very unfriendly policies.

Populism is everywhere. We have religious populism in the Muslim-majority countries as much as we have populism in the United States of America.

If you look at the history of demagoguery and fascism, it always happens when there are two things. It requires a gentle populace to allow it to happen, whether through laziness, ignorance or ineptitude, but it also requires a very angry, dissatisfied section of the populace who want egregiously simple answers to very complicated problems.

Few things trigger fear and misconception more than economic tribulation, and nothing prompts elected officials to react with more simplistic populism.

Remember how pissed you got when we had to do all that reading about the Rising back in sixth grade? I thought you were going to get us both expelled. You said the only way things could've gotten as bad as they did was if people were willing to take the first easy answer they could find and cling to it, rather than doing anything as complicated as actually thinking.

Depression cannot be overcome by listing a series of good things in one's life, any more than a broken foot can be healed by thinking about all the other bones you have that aren't broken.

There is a temptation in politics to look for simplistic slogans and to play the game in a way that looks like you're a savvy politician.

At the heart of our misunderstanding and infantile behavior is the wish for a miracle cure.

There is no silver bullet. I know people in Washington want grand solutions for everything.

Republicans, say Democrats, are too simplistic about what ails America, and their solutions are straight out of 'J.A.G.'

The anointed don't like to talk about painful trade-offs. They like to talk about happy "solutionsthat get rid of the whole problem- at least in their imagination.

It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.

With enemies, it's easier to just have them be straight-up bad guys so they can just get beaten up.

The fictionally correct have all the answers, and that's what's wrong with them. They're artistic technocrats. There's no dilemma so knotty, no question so baffling, that it can't be smoothly neutralized by dialing up the right attitude adjustment. Poor old Hemingway. If only he'd known.

Most people turn things like elections into a fetish and think it's the only way to go: if we just keep giving people the vote, that'll solve all our problems. In the end, that's just a silly, infantile notion.

It’s popular in Congress to vote for simplistic solutions to complex problems.