“Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.”

—  Laurence J. Peter

Entry for September 24; as quoted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, ISBN 0880297689, p. 78
Peter's Almanac (1982)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them." by Laurence J. Peter?
Laurence J. Peter photo
Laurence J. Peter 26
Canadian eductor 1919–1990

Related quotes

Georges Cuvier photo

“It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them.”

Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) French naturalist, zoologist and paleontologist (1769–1832)

as stated in 1796 before the National Institute of Sciences and Arts in Paris, concerning fossil elephants.

George Klir photo

“In spite of the insurmountable computational limits, we continue to pursue the many problems that possess the characteristics of organized complexity. These problems are too important for our well being to give up on them. The main challenge in pursuing these problems narrows down fundamentally to one question: how to deal with systems and associated problems whose complexities are beyond our information processing limits? That is, how can we deal with these problems if no computational power alone is sufficient?”

George Klir (1932–2016) American computer scientist

Source: Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic (1995), p. 2-3.

Sam Rayburn photo

“Well, Lyndon, you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I'd feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.”

Sam Rayburn (1882–1961) lawmaker from Bonham, Texas

To Lyndon Johnson, regarding Johnson's attendance at his first Cabinet meeting (under Kennedy); reported in David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (1972), Introduction.

Richard Nixon photo

“My point is that Boy Scout leaders, YMCA leaders, and others bring them in that direction, and teachers. And if you look over the history of societies, you will find, of course, that some of the highly intelligent people.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1970s, They're Born That Way (1971)

“Complexity scientists concluded that there are just too many factors—both concordant and contrarian—to understand. And with so many potential gaps in information, almost nobody can see the whole picture. Complex systems have severe limits, not only to predictability but also to measurability. Some complexity theorists argue that modelling, while useful for thinking and for studying the complexities of the world, is a particularly poor tool for predicting what will happen.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 226

Erik Naggum photo

“Well, take it from an old hand: the only reason it would be easier to program in C is that you can't easily express complex problems in C, so you don't.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: new to lisp (3rd time lucky) http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/ef9b57ecc5555931 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles

J. Doyne Farmer photo

“Complex adaptive systems have the property that if you run them—by just letting the mathematical variable of "time" go forward—they'll naturally progress from chaotic, disorganized, undifferentiated, independent states to organized, highly differentiated, and highly interdependent states. Organized structures emerge spontaneously… A weak system gives rise only to simpler forms of self-organization; a strong one gives rise to more complex forms, like life.”

J. Doyne Farmer (1952) American physicist and entrepreneur (b.1952)

The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (1995)

Raewyn Connell photo

“Research is something that everyone can do, and everyone ought to do. It is simply collecting information and thinking systematically about it. The word ‘research’ carries overtones of abstruse statistics and complex methods, white coats and computers. Some social research is highly specialised but most is not; much of the best research is logically very straightforward. Useful research on many problems can be done with small resources, and should be a regular part of the life of any thoughtful person involved in social action.”

Raewyn Connell (1944) Australian sociologist

Raewyn Connell et al. (1975). How to do small surveys – a guide for students in sociology, kindred industries and allied trades. School of Social Sciences. Flinders University. p. 1.

Richard Dawkins photo

“Ben Stein: What do think is the possibility that intelligent design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics, or in evolution?
Richard Dawkins: Well, it could come about in the following way: it could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved by probably some kind of Darwinian means to a very, very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto, perhaps, this planet. Now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of our chemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer, and that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe. But that higher intelligence would itself have had to have come about by some explicable, or ultimately explicable, process. It couldn't have just jumped into existence spontaneously. That's the point.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed ()

Daniel Patrick Moynihan photo

“Political society wants things simple. Political scientists know them to be complex… One could argue that, in part, the leftist impulse is so conspicuous among the educated and well-to-do precisely because they are exposed to more information, and are accordingly forced to choose between living with the strains of complexity, or lapsing into simplism.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003) American politician

"The Schism in Black America" Public Interest (27), 1972.
Attributed

Related topics