Complex Quotes

“A thin, flexible, layer of ice had already formed on the water, and the undulating movement caught the light of the setting sun, like a sparkling curtain of light billowing across the bay. Connie tried to capture the moment in her mind as the thin ice shimmered in oranges and reds as it moved between already forming pieces of thicker ice.”
― Sheena Billett, From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget this day,’ Connie said. ‘I want to soak up every single moment, so that I can remember it when I’m old. Remember that I…we, did this. I want to have stories to tell when I’m old. I want to have done things.”
― Sheena Billett, From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life

“The first wave of homesickness caught Connie by surprise. She had not heard or felt its approach until it hit her hard, knocking her to the ground.”
― Sheena Billett, From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life

“Alix looked at Nikola. With a slight movement of his head, he indicated the open doorway, and she got up and followed him outside. They faced each other, hunched against the wind, and he began quietly, ‘If anything should happen to me…’
She met his eyes and saw something different there. This was not his usual self-pitying ploy to engage her sympathy. He really meant this. Her first instinct was to reply, ‘Nothing will happen. You’ve been in dozens of battles and come out safely.’
‘This could be different,’ he said. ‘I just want you to know, if anything did happen, I have made Dragomir promise to look after you.’
She almost laughed. Dragomir had taken care of her ever since they were forced out of Uzice a year ago. Then she realised what it had cost Nikola to exact that promise. He had been jealous of Drago since they had met in the ruins of Belgrade and he refused to accept that there could be anything between them beyond the relationship of mistress and servant. This was a tacit acceptance that it was much more than that.”
― Holly Green, A Call to Home

“In his entire life, Father Abaddon Sohar had never seen anything like what was in that cell, and he knew instantly that at least one of those fantastic tales of the monstrous birth of some grotesque abomination was, in fact, very, very true.”
― Stephen A. Reger, Storm Surge: Book Two of the Stormsong Trilogy

“The anchor symbolizes clarity and courage during chaos and confusion,” my Grand-mere says. “Chaos and Confusion, aren’t those your cats names?” Now I know her story is a delusion.”
― Rebecca Rosenberg, Champagne Widows: First Woman of Champagne, Veuve Clicquot

“Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.”
― Rebecca Rosenberg, Champagne Widows: First Woman of Champagne, Veuve Clicquot

“This was no fantasy. This
was death. We could call it, we could cast lots about it,
plan for it, gamble with it, welcome it in. But we did not
have the power to send it away.”
― Katie Hall-May, Puck's Legacy

“The whole is not merely different from the sum of its parts - the whole lacks a clear relationship to the parts’ sum.”
― Roger Spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“Today, humanity faces technological and existential conditions that can’t be separated. We define this phenomenon as “Techistentialism.” Our existential condition is an uncertain one, considering the inherent dualities and paradoxes of life. Our techistential condition is no different.”
― Roger spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“In contrast to advice, our UN-VICE is not a suggestion of behavior or a mandate. Instead, our UN-VICE is a way to decipher changing circumstances imaginatively. All advice should be carefully considered, combined with an emphasis on developing and trusting our own capabilities.

In our increasingly UN-VICE world, the value of recommendations is rapidly decreasing. Systemic disruption has devalued ad-vice; instead, we offer our best UN-VICE. Inspired by Richard Feynman, we must explore unanswered questions, rather than adhering to unquestionable answers.

Zen Master Suzuki Roshi said “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” Our UN-VICE draws from the three stages of the Japanese martial arts concept shuhari. In the first stage, shu, the student masters the established fundamentals. In the second stage, ha, the learner practices and experiments with novel approaches, guided by their own unique perspectives. In the third stage, ri, they break loose from confining rulebooks to adapt freely to any situation. Shuhari is a journey, a continuous process of learning, experimenting, and letting go.”
― Roger Spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“Our world is facing new tensions, contradictions, complexities, and uncertainties. This new reality is the basis for our own version of VUCA, updated with two additional features: Intersecting and Exponential. In an UN-VICE world, these concepts are as important as UNknown, Volatile, and Complex. We must go beyond automatically relying on advice and start forming our own UN-VICE to survive. Proposing yet another acronym is risky - we hope the acronym police will be merciful.”
― Roger Spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“What is our UN-VICE in the context of Disruption 3.0?
To sum up, UN-VICE is an updated way of capturing the state of the world. Framing the dynamics of systemic disruption as UNknown, Volatile, Intersecting, Complex, Exponential enables an empowering response. We are not helpless victims unable to make decisions. With UN-VICE, we have the power to shape our own futures.

KEY POINTS: OUR UN-VICE ACRONYM

- UNknown: Uncertainty becomes our comfort zone. Recognize you can’t know anything perfectly and many decisions are based on assumptions. Increased uncertainty lowers the value of advice and requires increased self-reliance. Learn how to respond regardless of the lack of precedents.

- Volatile: Harness change for gain. Our world, and change itself, is evolving faster than ever before. Volatility is not new; we simply can’t ignore its impact. In volatility, we see the shifting speed and texture of the changing environment.

- Intersecting: Everything connects to everything else. The broader our lens, the greater the insights gained from realizing how boundaries are disappearing.

- Complex: Notice emergent properties and adapt. In complex environments, inputs do not map clearly to outputs. Practitioners must acknowledge emergent properties and reconcile the immediate with the indefinite. Such systems require critical thinking, experimentation, and judgment. Evaluate emerging issues, build resiliency, and learn to adapt to expanding complexity.

- Exponential: Pay attention to nonlinear types of change that increase in growth rate. Notice rapid acceleration of seemingly small shifts. Monitoring early on will mean fewer surprises.”
― Roger Spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“UN-VICE as a constant environment of the world:

The UN-VICE environment is an inherent constant. It is easier to imagine the world as predictable, but this world does not exist. Reality will continue to display UN-VICE features: UNknown, Volatile, Intersecting, Complex, Exponential.”
― Roger Spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“Many organizations and militaries use VUCA as an acronym to describe the disruptive state of the world, given its Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity.

UN-VICE is an updated way of capturing the state and velocity of the world, with our acronym for UNknown, Volatile, Intersecting, Complex, and Exponential:

- UNknown: Recognizing that you can’t know anything perfectly, and that many of our decisions are based on assumptions. Increased uncertainty lowers the value of ad-vice and requires increased self-reliance.

- Volatile: Our world, and change itself, is evolving faster than ever before. Volatility is not inherently good or bad; it is simply impactful. In volatility we see shifting speed, texture, and magnitude of the changing environment.

- Intersecting: The broader our filters, the more we realize that what we observe overlaps with other things. Boundaries are disappearing, connecting new areas through combinations.

- Complex: These more-than-complicated systems have unreliable input-output relationships and cannot be summarized or modeled without losing their essence. Unpredictable situations with unknown unknowns.

- Exponential: A nonlinear type of change that increases in its growth rate. To an observer, this change may happen gradually, then suddenly. Rapid acceleration of seemingly-small shifts.”
― Roger Spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“Given the inverse relationship between predictability and uncertainty, the cost of maintaining business as usual rises significantly.”
― Roger Spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“Whenever something is engineered as complex, it is designed to keep you simple.”
― Richard Diaz, Illness Defined; The Theorem

“Extremism, by its very nature, must
always go to its extreme.”
― Katie Hall-May, Puck's Legacy

“It is always easier to destroy a complex system than to selectively alter it.”
― Roby James, Commitment

“In non-linear environments, assumptions amplify.”
― Roger Spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“Life can be spent in an atmosphere of continuous encouragement, you will ignore the complex and it will disappear”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Nowhere else for Jekyll to Hyde, so he crawled inside himself and died.”
― Niedria Kenny, Order in the Courtroom: The Tale of a Texas Poker Player

“Being complicated is enough to complicate your life.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“I sat in a world of sorrow trying to figure things out. I couldn’t because the world isn’t supposed to be figured out. You’re not supposed to get it. You’re supposed to flow with it and things come or don’t. It’s that simple, but we think everything’s complex when it’s just sitting right in front of us.”
― Dominic Riccitello

“I worked with him in a way where there was no need to align. We felt and the feeling was simple but complex. It was the intensity in our grasp and when it was done, it was done.”
― Dominic Riccitello

“History is complex.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Westerse schuld: Mythe of realiteit?

“His whisper was the softest sound I ever knew, which seemed to bring the loudest heartbeat.”
― Dominic Riccitello

“What happens when water gets into a crack and it freezes?"

"It expands," I said. "Makes the crack bigger".

"Unhealed trauma is a crack. And all the little hard things that trickle into it that would have rolled off someone else, settle. Then when life get cold, that crack gets bigger, longer, deeper. It makes new breaks. You don't know how broken she was or what she was trying to do to fill those cracks. Being broken is not an excuse for bad behavior, you still have to make good choices and do the right thing. But it can be the reason. And sometimes understanding the reason can be what helps you heal.”
― Abby Jimenez, Just for the Summer

“I realize that I have been thrust into an existence so vast in both scope and complexity that I cannot hope to understand that which I’m living in. But is that not the way of purest wonder and are those not the ingredients of the most splendid magic.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Art doesn’t need to be more complex or more realistic to be valid.”
― Christian Baloga