Motivational Quotes

Simplicity

Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.

- Confucius

Best Quotes about Simplicity

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Hemingway, Ernest

Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Behind the complicated details of the world stand the simplicities: God is good, the grown-up man or woman knows the answer to every question, there is such a thing as truth, and justice is as measured and faultless as a clock. Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood --for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories.

Greene, Graham

God always takes the simplest way.

Einstein, Albert

The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.

Gibran, Kahlil

Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds: they might be compared to some beauty carelessly dressed and thereby all the more attractive.

Bruyere, Jean De La

Simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

Gourmont, Remy De

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.

Einstein, Albert

A refined simplicity is the characteristic of all high bred deportment, in every country, and a considerate humanity should be the aim of all beneath it.

Cooper, James F.

10.

Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.

Bailey, Philip James

11.

The trouble with measurement is its seeming simplicity.

12.

The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passion are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.

Wilde, Oscar

13.

The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

14.

Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.

Jim Horning

15.

The price we pay for the complexity of life is too high. When you think of all the effort you have to put in --telephonic, technological and relational --to alter even the slightest bit of behavior in this strange world we call social life, you are left pining for the straightforwardness of primitive peoples and their physical work.

Baudrillard, Jean

16.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.

Albert Einstein

17.

Seek simplicity but distrust it.

Whitehead, Alfred North

18.

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.

Hoare, C.A.R.

20.

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

Alfred North Whitehead

21.

Manifest plainness, Embrace simplicity, Reduce selfishness, Have few desires.

Lao-tzu

22.

Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.

Johnson, Samuel

23.

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.

Einstein, Albert

24.

The trouble with so many of us is that we underestimate the power of simplicity. We have a tendency it seems to over complicate our lives and forget what's important and what's not. We tend to mistake movement for achievement. We tend to focus on activities instead of results. And as the pace of life continues to race along in the outside world, we forget that we have the power to control our lives regardless of what's going on outside.

Stuberg, Robert

25.

The complex develops out of the simple.

Wilson, Colin

26.

I have always observed that to succeed in the world a person must seem simple, yet wise.

Montesquieu, Charles De

27.

Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.

Cooley, Charles Horton

28.

No matter how complicated a problem is, it usually can be reduced to a simple, comprehensible form which is often the best solution.

Wang, An

29.

Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

30.

Never do anything standing that you can do sitting, or anything sitting that you can do lying down.

Proverb, Chinese

31.

Understanding reduces the greatest to simplicity, and lack of its causes the least to take on the magnitude.

Holliwell, Raymond

32.

It is the childlike mind that finds the kingdom.

Fillmore, Charles

33.

The most complex things are the simplest.

Celeste, Agni

34.

I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.

James, Henry

35.

When thought is too weak to be simply expressed, it's clear proof that it should be rejected.

Clapiers, Luc De

36.

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?

Morris, William

37.

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.

Horton, Doug

38.

There is repetition everywhere, and nothing is found only once in the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.

Ruskin, John

40.

Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straight forwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferior, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer.

Alford

41.

It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.

Aristotle

42.

Nothing is true, but that which is simple.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

43.

Intellectual comradeship requires that you think your thoughts through to the place where you can make the complex seem simple, the obscure quite clear.

Seabury, David

44.

I have a simple life. I mean, you just give me a drum roll, they announce my name, and I come out and sing. In my job I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing.

Bennett, Tony

45.

To simplify complications is the first essential of success.

Buckle, George Earle

46.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

Henry David Thoreau

47.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

Churchill, Winston

48.

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.

Buffett, Warren

49.

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.

Descartes, Rene

50.

To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.

Lee, Bruce