A Quote by Iris Origo
[On writing biography:] ... every human life is at once so complex and so simple, so perplexing and so clear, so superficial and so profound, that any attempt to present it as a unified, consistent whole, to enclose it within a rigid frame, inevitably tempts one to cheat or to falsify.
Related Quotes
For the FBI and for the United States, the war on terrorism is a complex and perplexing issue. It is as complex and perplexing as any issue we have ever faced.
To me, inner and outer are so strongly linked that any collective change that happens within human beings, within the human psyche, inevitably will be reflected externally in what happens on the whole planet.
Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.
Any attempt to reduce the complex properties of biological organisms or of nervous systems or of human brains to simple physical and chemical systems is foolish.
Something good happened to my writing when I stopped being afraid to do something simple, for the fear that people might think I couldn't do something more complex. Don't be confused by the word simple. Simple is not easy, it is clear voiced, and fearlessly elegant.
The morality of the 21st century will depend on how we respond to this simple but profound question: Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human?
Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it.
The craft, the writing of a song, is about creating a story, a life story, a world within three minutes, but that's the frame, if you like, the picture frame. That fascinates me.
I discovered in writing the biography of Bill Clinton that it is actually easier to write a biography of someone who is dead. Although you can't interview them, you have a fuller perspective on their whole life after they're gone and people are more willing to talk about them.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
Pictures could not be accessories to the story -- evidence -- they had to contain the story within the frame; the best picture contained a whole war within one frame.
Profound minds are the most likely to think lightly of the resources of human reason, and it is the superficial thinker who is generally strongest in every kind of unbelief.
Science fiction is a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present. You can criticize communists, racists, fascists or any other clear and present danger, and they can't imagine you are writing about them.
The Russell Cosmogony with its new concepts of light, matter, energy, electricity and magnetism is a simple yet complete, consistent and workable cosmogony which will enable future scientists to visualize the universe as a unified whole, and will open the door to the New Age of Transmutation.
Paul Simon once said that a songwriter's supreme challenge was being complex and simple at the same time-writing songs with lasting depth that are also simple enough to be memorable. Jimmy Van Heusen was a master at this kind of song. His music was complex, with deeply rich chord changes any jazzman can embrace, but also possessed catchy, crystalline melodies of exceeding sing-ability. His songs were meant to be sung, not just listened to, and they were sung by the best, with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby at the top of that list.
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. ... It was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.
Related Authors
Asahel Nettleton Quotes
American
Biographer
Elizabeth Aston Quotes
English
Biographer
Gene Lees Quotes
Canadian
Biographer
George Earle Buckle Quotes
English
Biographer
James Parton Quotes
American
Biographer
Jon Lee Anderson Quotes
Afghani
Biographer
Lord David Cecil Quotes
British
Biographer
Marva Collins Quotes
American
Biographer
Nancy Milford Quotes
American
Biographer
Peter Padfield Quotes
British
Biographer
Rob Pruitt Quotes
American
Biographer
T. J. Stiles Quotes
American
Biographer
William Mackergo Taylor Quotes
American
Biographer