“There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.”

As We May Think (1945)

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Vannevar Bush57

American electrical engineer and science administrator 1890–1974

James Jones book From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity (1951), p. 668
Context: Why was it everything was always so goddam complicated? Even the simplest things was so goddam complicated when you come to doing them.

“If one is but secure at the foundation, he will not be pained by departure from minor details or affairs that are contrary to expectation. But in the end, the details of a matter are important. The right and wrong of one's way of doing things are found in trivial matters.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Hagakure (c. 1716)

“grown-ups always say that things are complicated.”

Nicholas Sparks A Bend in the Road

Jonah Ryan, Chapter 37, p. 336
Variant: I don't want to be a grown-up. … Because grown-ups always say that things are complicated.
Source: 2000s, A Bend in the Road (2001)

“Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can't deal with them… But it's a complicated matter: Science studies what's at the edge of understanding, and what's at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated. In fact even understanding insects is an extremely complicated problem in the sciences. So the actual sciences tell us virtually nothing about human affairs.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Science in the Dock, Discussion with Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Krauss & Sean M. Carroll (2011), 2, Chomsky.info, March 1, 2006, August 16, 2011 http://www.chomsky.info/debates/20060301.htm, Quotes 2010s, 2011

“You're joining a group of people who can do incredible things. They can make the computer do anything they can imagine.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

From An Insight, An Idea with Tim Berners-Lee http://www.weforum.org/sessions/summary/insight-idea-tim-berners-lee at 27:27 (25 January 2013) Context: When somebody has learned how to program a computer … You're joining a group of people who can do incredible things. They can make the computer do anything they can imagine.

“Did it ever occur to you that there's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another?”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

"Quo Vadimus?" http://books.google.com/books?id=vvEvAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Did+it+ever+occur+to+you+that+there's+no+limit+to+how+complicated+things+can+get+on+account+of+one+thing+always+leading+to+another%22&pg=PA34#v=onepage, The Adelphi (January 1930)

“Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

“As you get older, the more complicated things get. It's almost therapeutic to be doing simple things with the kids.”

Robert De Niro (1943) American actor, director and producer

What I've Learned

“If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Si 50 millions de personnes disent une bêtise, c'est quand même une bêtise. As quoted in Listening and Speaking : A Guide to Effective Oral Communication https://books.google.com/books?redir_esc=y&hl=es&id=0CcWYwjwyRgC&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=foolish (1954) by Ralph G. Nichols and Thomas R. Lewis, p. 74 Also misattributed to Bertrand Russell, by Laurence J. Peter, in The Peter Prescription : How To Make Things Go Right (1976), but he subsequently attributed to France in Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977). Derived variant: If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie. W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer's Notebook (1949), entry for 1901 Variant: If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

“For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

http://paws.kettering.edu/~jhuggins/humor/stupid.html
I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

“There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.”

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Vannevar Bush57

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