"When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute." (Walter Lippmann, "The Public Philosophy", 1955)
"The more complex a civilization, the more vital to its existence is the maintenance of the flow of information; hence the more vulnerable it becomes to any disturbance in that flow." (Stanislaw Lem, "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub", 1961)
"[Human] communication is rendered more complex by the use of differing sets of sound-symbols, called languages and by the fact that a given set of symbols tends to change with the passage of years to become an entirely new language." (Howard L Myers, "The Creatures of Man", 1968)
"Isn’t the measure of complexity the measure of the eternal joy?" (Ursula K Le Guin, "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow", 1971)
"Time is no longer a line along which history, past or future, lies neatly arranged, but a field of great mystery and complexity, in the contemplation of which the mind perceives an immense terror, and an indestructible hope." (Ursula K Le Guin, 1977)
"Any information system of sufficient complexity will inevitably become infected with viruses - viruses generated from within itself." (Neal Stephenson, "Snow Crash", 1992)
"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest." (Marc S Zicree, "Survivors" [episode of Babylon 5], 1994)
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