Chaos: Making a New Science

by James Gleick

Shallow ideas can be assimilated; ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility.

quoting Tolstoy: “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”