
“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.”
All the Trouble in the World (1994)
“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.”
Source: 1960s-1970s, The Sciences of the Artificial, 1969, p. 53.
“As the man said, for every complex problem there’s a simple solution, and it’s wrong.”
Source: Foucault's Pendulum
Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. ix
In some published transcripts or quotations of this speech a variant of this statement appears immediately before the quote by Churchill below, but was not said during Reagan's televised address on (27 October 1964). Though he did make variations of the speech elsewhere it is unclear exactly when and where he may have said used these precise words:
: They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.
Later variant: For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems which are beyond our comprehension. Well, the truth is, there are simple answers, they just are not easy ones.
:* California Gubernatorial Inauguration Speech (5 January 1967) http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/govspeech/01051967a.htm
1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
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
Source: 1980s, Against The Grain (1986), Ch. 10, The Critic as Clown