Motivational Quotes

Simplicity

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

- Lao-tzu

Best Quotes about Simplicity

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

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

Descartes, Rene

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

Mann, Thomas

The complex develops out of the simple.

Wilson, Colin

Seek simplicity but distrust it.

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

What is conceived well is expressed clearly.

Destouches, Philippe Nericault

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

The trouble with measurement is its seeming simplicity.

10.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

11.

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

12.

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

Lao-tzu

13.

To simplify complications is the first essential of success.

Buckle, George Earle

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.

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.

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

Einstein, Albert

17.

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

18.

Simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

Gourmont, Remy De

19.

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

20.

Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.

Jim Horning

21.

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

22.

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

Johnson, Samuel

23.

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

Albert Einstein

24.

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

25.

Simplicity is the peak of civilization.

Jessie Sampter

26.

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

27.

God always takes the simplest way.

Einstein, Albert

28.

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

Kinder, Jack

29.

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

Aristotle

30.

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.

31.

It is the childlike mind that finds the kingdom.

Fillmore, Charles

32.

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

33.

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

Bailey, Philip James

34.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

35.

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

Holliwell, Raymond

36.

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

Confucius

37.

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

Oscar Wilde

38.

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

39.

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

Deupree, Richard

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Kempis, Thomas

43.

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

Lee, Bruce

44.

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

Buffett, Warren

45.

A taste for simplicity cannot endure for long.

Delacroix, Eugene

46.

The whole is simpler than the sum of its parts.

Gibbs, Willard

47.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

48.

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

49.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

50.

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

Einstein, Albert