The simplification of anything is always sensational.

The Tao teaches us to let go of things. Use the 80/20 rule. If you take all your clothes, you’ll find out that you only wear 20 percent of them. Take what you have and don’t use and circulate it. Give stuff to people who truly need it. After all, we come into this world with nothing; we leave this world with nothing.

Move fast with stable infrastructure.

He that rises late must trot all day.

Instead of buying six things, buy one thing that you really like. Don’t keep buying just for the sake of it.

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

I’m frugal. I’m not a very acquisitive woman. I never waste food. If you prepare your own food, you engage with the world, it tastes alive. It tastes good.

I don’t think people are going to switch over to bikes because it’s good for them or because it’s politically correct. They’re going to do it because it gets them from A to B faster.

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.

Simplify, simplify.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.

I don’t care about money.

It takes me about two hours to run into Target. People always want a picture. They hem and haw, and they can’t spit the words out, so they waste about five minutes of my time just standing there getting ready for a picture. Just do it!

I’m very much into making lists and breaking things apart into categories.

I come from – I came from Wales, and it’s a strong, butch society. We were in the war and all that. People didn’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is get on with it. I don’t waste time being soft. I’m not cold, but I don’t like being, wasting my time with – life’s too short.

Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.

We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We’re inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, ‚Gimme, gimme, gimme,‘ you will always be in short supply.

I don’t throw lavish parties or nothing like that – I just want a bed and a TV.

My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty… it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.

Look at the Chandra Levy case. It’s become a Star Chamber. The major networks, the cable networks, they’re being prosecutors. They’re judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c’mon, that’s ridiculous. But they’re doing it.

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

Make measurable progress in reasonable time.

The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about. Process makes you more efficient.

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.

Pointing is a metaphor we all know. We’ve done a lot of studies and tests on that, and it’s much faster to do all kinds of functions, such as cutting and pasting, with a mouse, so it’s not only easier to use but more efficient.

Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

And I try to give the best bang for the buck. I love performing more than anything else.

I have too many clothes, I have too many options.

I’m bloody awful at multi-tasking.

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.

When I retire I’m going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.

I don’t have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

With the amount of fixed expense that goes into developing something like the BE-4 engine, you want it to be used as much as possible.

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Why go to a machine when you could go to a human being?

Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.

All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.

I’ve noticed that when I am selling a lot of records, certain things become easier. I’m not talking about getting a table in a restaurant.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

Working with a lot of people at the same time is a task. I really like making stuff and getting stuff done. One of the things I really liked about Facebook was that I could always move so quickly. I wrote the original application in, like, nine days at the end of January.

I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.

Outsourcing is inevitable, and I don’t think it’s necessarily treating people like things.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

Material things are delightful, but they’re not important.

We don’t thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.

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

In fact, the best thing we could do on taxes for all Americans is to simplify the individual tax code. This will be a tough job, but members of both parties have expressed an interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join them.

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

I believe that the whole idea of the consumer society is tottering. We’ve kept ourselves going by producing more and more goods, most of which people don’t need. I’m anti-consumerism; I own four pairs of black Levis and that’s it.

I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.

Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but they can’t compete with U.S. agribusiness that relies on a huge government subsidy, thanks to Ronald Reagan’s free market enthusiasms.