Motivational Quotes

Simplicity

Simplicity is the intention, purity in the affection; simplicity turns to God, purity unites with and enjoys him.

- Kempis, Thomas

Best Quotes about Simplicity

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

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

Einstein, Albert

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

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.

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.

Horton, Doug

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

In our systems work through simplicity, consistency, and repetition.

Kinder, Jack

The trouble with measurement is its seeming simplicity.

God always takes the simplest way.

Einstein, Albert

10.

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

Confucius

11.

Simplicity is the peak of civilization.

Jessie Sampter

12.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

13.

Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.

Jim Horning

14.

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

15.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

16.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

17.

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

18.

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

Aristotle

19.

A taste for simplicity cannot endure for long.

Delacroix, Eugene

20.

The most complex things are the simplest.

Celeste, Agni

21.

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

22.

I paint from the top down. From the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the houses, then the cattle, and then the people.

Moses, Grandma

23.

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

Clapiers, Luc De

24.

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

25.

It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

Lee, Bruce

26.

The height of cultivation runs to simplicity. Halfway cultivation runs to ornamentation.

Lee, Bruce

27.

The complex develops out of the simple.

Wilson, Colin

28.

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

Johnson, Samuel

29.

Seek simplicity but distrust it.

Whitehead, Alfred North

30.

The whole is simpler than the sum of its parts.

Gibbs, Willard

31.

It is the childlike mind that finds the kingdom.

Fillmore, Charles

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Bailey, Philip James

35.

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

Lao-tzu

36.

Order and simplification are the first steps towards the mastery of a subject.

Mann, Thomas

37.

To simplify complications is the first essential of success.

Buckle, George Earle

38.

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.

39.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

Thoreau, Henry David

40.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

Oscar Wilde

41.

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

Buffett, Warren

42.

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

43.

I don't understand complicated problems. I only understand simple ones.

Deupree, Richard

44.

Simplicity is the intention, purity in the affection; simplicity turns to God, purity unites with and enjoys him.

Kempis, Thomas

45.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

46.

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

Churchill, Winston

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.

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

Descartes, Rene

49.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

50.

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