“Yet nothing was simple, certainly not simplification.”

— Colum McCann, book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here
Context: I knew then that it would end badly, her and Corrigan, these children. Someone or other was going to get torn asunder. And yet why shouldn't they fall in love, if even just for a short while? Why shouldn't Corrigan live his life in the body that was hurting him, giving up in places? Why shouldn't he have a moment of release from this God of his? It was a torture shop for him, worrying about the world, having to deal with intricacies when what he really wanted was to be ordinary and do the simple thing.Yet nothing was simple, certainly not simplification. Poverty, chastity, obedience — he had spent his life in fealty to them, but was unarmed when they turned against him.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Yet nothing was simple, certainly not simplification." by Colum McCann?

Colum McCann71

Irish writer and journalist 1965

Related quotes

“Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The Age of Uncertainty (1977), BBC Television series (also published in book form, non verbatim version)

“To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Introduction, p. 5
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“I believe Buddhism to be a simplification of Hinduism and Islam to be a simplification of Xianity.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Letter to Sheldon Vanauken (14 December 1950), quoted in Sleuthing C. S. Lewis (2001) by Kathryn Ann Lindskoog, p. 393 http://books.google.com/books?id=8ZfLXXLZM9UC&pg=PA393&dq=%22I+believe+Buddhism+to+be+a+simplification+of+Hinduism+and+Islam+to+be+a+simplification+of+Xianity.%22

“The self is a simplification of the notion of soul, created to serve the purposes of the modern sciences of psychology and economics, both of which want you to be happy in a simple, straightforward way they can count.”

Harvey Mansfield (1932) Author, professor

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

“Progress towards the civilization of the 21st century will certainly not be simple or easy.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Nobel Address (1991)
Context: Progress towards the civilization of the 21st century will certainly not be simple or easy. One cannot get rid overnight of the heavy legacy of the past or the dangers created in the post-war years. We are experiencing a turning point in international affairs and are only at the beginning of a new, and I hope mostly peaceful, lengthy period in the history of civilization.
With less East-West confrontation, or even none at all, old contradictions resurface, which seemed of secondary importance compared to the threat of nuclear war. The melting ice of the Cold War reveals old conflicts and claims, and entirely new problems accumulate rapidly.

“People are so lazy, they want everything to be simple, but nothing is simple. Nothing.”

Malcolm Azania book The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

Source: The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), Chapter 31 “Saturday Morning Mission” (p. 173)