Simplistic Views Quotes

We like our archetypes and heroes to be what they are at face value. And life doesn't work out like that.

We all have a fight - some an easy one, and some a big one, and if you have formed the idea that there is a kind of dividing line in the world, and that on the one side is the good, and on the other side the bad, why, all I can say is that you have a wrong notion of things.

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.

Too many have rushed in to explain the Arab world to itself.

The conviction that everything that happens on earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces.

People like to think about MPs in very crass terms: you're either an uber-loyalist babe, or you're a rebel. There isn't any grown-up room to be thoughtful. There isn't space in public debate for that.

She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.

Little things please little minds.

Americans get very simple explanations of what happens to them.

Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.

Writers and journalists tend to be simplistic about politics when, like all other areas of life, it's more complicated.

You come from the city and think small means simple when all it realy means is complicated in a smaller place. Which sometimes adds to the complication.

You don't get to be a respected intellectual by uttering truisms in monosyllables.

In general, we are lazy as consumers and just want to label people as good guy, bad guy.

The proverbist knows nothing of the two sides of a question. He knows only the roundness of answers.

I have a neighbor who knows 200 types of wine. ... I only know two types of wine - red and white. But my neighbor only knows two types of countries - industrialized and developing. And I know 200.

When I was two years old, I heard about his [Dalai Lama] flight from Tibet. Being very little, I said, "Oh, good Tibetans, bad Chinese." Those were the black-and-white ways that I thought.

You know boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot like women. You just have to read the manual and press the right button.

We tend to paint the past only in extremes, as having been either categorically better than the present or irredeemably bad.

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts... Seek simplicity and distrust it.

Newlyweds, they have this ideal, this picture of what marriage is like, something similar of their favorite memories growing up. If only it were that simple.

There are versions of the pro-gay and anti-gay agenda that assume a simplistic rather than simple understanding of the issue - at least from a biblical perspective. Reject it or embrace it: that's the easy choice that makes for great sound-bites but ruins lives.

I hate cynicism. I wipe it from me. I don't like cynical people. I don't like cynical movies. Cynicism is very easy. You don't have to justify it. You don't have to fight for it.

It's a romantic view of Canada. It's like Michael Moore saying we don't lock our doors in Canada. I lock my door mainly because my girlfriend wants me to lock the door, but mind you we lock our doors. It is a little simplistic to say that we blend easily back home with other cultures. It's difficult, but I think it's mainly a big city phenomenon.