simplicity quotes

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

The greatest progress is in the sciences that study the simplest systems. So take, say, physics – greatest progress there. But one of the reasons is that the physicists have an advantage that no other branch of sciences has. If something gets too complicated, they hand it to someone else.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

I always think the everyday is more relevant than anything too grand because we all have to deal with it.

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

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

Part of the reason there’s an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you’re in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let’s say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.

In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.

I describe myself as a simple Buddhist monk. No more, no less.

I think business has to be stupider. I want to do really straightforward, stupid business – just talk to me like a 4-year-old. And I refuse to negotiate. I do not negotiate. I can collaborate. But I’m an artist, so as soon as you negotiate, you’re being compromised.

The wind can be quite extreme in England. We are not familiar with that in Germany, and you have to keep things simple.

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus‘ message was simple. Jesus didn’t go around condemning people.

I want to reform the tax code so that it’s simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 – the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.

The last suit that you wear, you don’t need any pockets.

I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine.

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

Simplicity is a key to avoiding complication. Part of the definition of simplicity is ‚not complex or complicated; sincere.‘

I am a simple Buddhist monk – no more, no less.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

Simple goes a long way.

I’m a big fan of all-you-can-eat plans, because they’re simpler for customers.

Faith is easy; I think people complicate it.

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ.

You just have to have a simple faith.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head nor tail out of it.

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.

I spend a lot of time just, you know, with my girlfriend and my dog. And I mean, we don’t have a lot of furniture in our house, so it’s really simple. And we’re trying to build products for everyone in the world, right. And you don’t want to get isolated to do that.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Simplify, simplify.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it’s poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

I am not one who – who flamboyantly believes in throwing a lot of words around.

It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.

Issues are never simple. One thing I’m proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

I don’t let my religious world get too complicated.

Some sarcasm is best told simply.

I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

I’m just a simple country girl.

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