Quotes About Simplification

#1. This is the whole secret of the practice of Elementalism: it obtains happiness by the most rigid and austere simplification of the means to happiness.

John Cowper Powys

#2. I never want to dumb it down. If there's any simplification, it's just a simplification to make sure that the reader understands the point that the character is trying to make.

Tony DiTerlizzi

#3. Calls for the simplification of abstract or allusive art have always come from governments suspicious of artists themselves. This is why totalitarian regimes have always legislated some form of realism.

Russell Smith

#4. Nothing was simple, certainly not simplification.

Colum McCann

#5. Many foreigners have asked me how we made the Danish style. And I've answered that it ... was rather a continuous process of purification, and for me of simplification, to cut down to the simplest possible elements of four legs, a seat and combined top rail and arm rest.

Hans Wegner

#6. Here's a simplification of everything I'm going through: You + Me is bad news.

Sara Bareilles

#7. It is by a process of simplification carried constantly further and further that happiness is won.

John Cowper Powys

#8. We are sliding into a time of simplification where the practical design of everyday things will be an important demand to consider

Kay Bojesen

#9. Twitter is the ultimate service for the mobile age - its simplification and constraint of the publishing medium to 140 characters is perfectly complementary to a mobile experience. People still need longer stuff, but they see the headline on Twitter or Facebook.

Matt Mullenweg

#10. The writer's first job is not to have opinions but to tell the truth ... and refuse to be an accomplice of lies and misinformation. Literature is the house of nuance and contrariness against the voices of simplification.

Susan Sontag

#11. You have to factor in the human propensity for simplification, Sverl, and for their inability to believe in their own demise and unimportance. It's the impulse behind the religions -

Neal Asher

#12. My tendency towards bareness and simplification has been practiced in three fields: modeling, colors, and the figuration of the personages.

Joan Miro

#13. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

#14. A beautiful woman, Simone Weil said, seeing herself in the mirror, knows "This is I." An ugly woman knows with equal certainty, "This is not I." Maud knew this neat division represented an over-simplification. The doll-mask she saw had nothing to do with her, nothing.

A.S. Byatt

#15. Give the child good books, then let it alone! Don't plough and harrow its brain, or stretch it on Procrustes-beds of standardization, simplification, and what not!

Laura E. Richards

#16. I believe in metaphysics. I don't believe in God because I think that is a human simplification of the things we can't explain. But I believe in a greater universe.

Jochen Zeitz

#17. Name the nine prime fallacies," he snapped. "Simplification. Generalization. Circularity. Reduction. Analogy. False causality. Semantism. Irrelevancy ... .

Patrick Rothfuss

#18. Intellectuals ... regard over-simplification as the original sin of the mind and have no use for the slogans, the unqualified assertions and sweeping generalizations.

Aldous Huxley

#19. One of the things the tyrant most cunningly engineers is the gross over-simplification of language, because propaganda requires that the minds of the collective respond primitively to slogans of incitement.

Geoffrey Hill

#20. The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#21. Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing ... layout, processes, and procedures.

Tom Peters

#22. It's just that the longer I fish, the more I long for simplification and lightness.

Tom Sutcliffe

#23. Elegance is reduction, simplification, condensation. It is spare, stark, sleek. Elegance is cultivated abstraction. The source of Greek and Roman classicism - clarity, order, proportion, balance - is in Egypt.

Camille Paglia

#24. He can be regarded as the great master of simplification. The art of resolving the tension at the critical moment and in the most effacious way so as to clarify the position as desired is Capablanca's own.

Max Euwe

#25. The continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet, a varied, immensely rich cosmos. Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say 'Africa'. In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

#26. Yet, if our simplification of the gospel message is our main way of communicating these ideas, our faith and the faith of those we lead will be shallow, thus only wading in simple ideas of a complex God.

Sanejo I. Leonard

#27. You ask what is the use of classification, arrangement, and systemization? I answer you: order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject - the actual enemy is the unknown.

Thomas E. Mann

#28. Of course, any simplification runs the risk of mutilating reality; but it helps us establish perspectives.

Gaston Bachelard

#29. If we were the problem, it would be very convenient - kick Greece out, everything's fine. What would happen to Spain, what about Portugal, what about Italy, what about the whole of the euro zone? We need more cooperation and less simplification and prejudice.

George Papandreou

#30. A voluntary simplification of life-styles is not beyond our abilities, but it is probably outside our desires.

Bill McKibben

#31. With Complicated Grief I can say that there was a certain simplification in the process. Getting older means less wasted effort, things are clearer earlier. Being young meant flailing around a lot, especially as I was trying to invent new shapes without a ton of models.

Laura Mullen

#32. There never was a sounder logical maxim of scientific procedure than Ockham's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. That is to say; before you try a complicated hypothesis, you should make quite sure that no simplification of it will explain the facts equally well.

Charles Sanders Peirce

#33. People are so complex and multidimensional that raising someone to 'hero' status is too great a simplification.

Dalia Mogahed

#34. Poetry is the struggle against the simplification, codification, and mummification of language, it serves as a constant redirect - moving us to the experience to which the words point.

Billy Marshall Stoneking

#35. To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.

Thomas Malthus

#36. Political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the occurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the simplification of human life implied in even the best of it purposes.

Michael Joseph Oakeshott

#37. All the above is, of course, a gross simplification. There are deeper reasons to travel - itches and tickles on the underbelly of the unconscious mind. We go where we need to go, and then try to figure out what we're doing there.

Jeff Greenwald

#38. We should always bear in mind that numbers represent a simplification of reality.

Kenneth E. Boulding

#39. It was not just a touch, an action. It was a simplification of both of them: They were no longer Noah Czerny and Blue Sargent. They were now just him and her. Not even that. They were only the time that they held between them.

Maggie Stiefvater

#40. I like silent pictures and I always have ... I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember in this way: one of techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film.

Akira Kurosawa

#41. People who don't know how to summarize have no dignity. Neither do people who needlessly drag on their messy lives. They who don't know the beauty of simplification, of pruning away the unnecessary, die without ever comprehending the true meaning of life.

Young-Ha Kim

#42. Progress is in simplification, which often follows complexity.

Pearl Zhu

#43. Government should concentrate on building up infrastructure and skill development. Simplification of taxation is another important area.

Jamshyd Godrej

#44. Simplification Technique #1: I have some other priorities to think of at this very moment, therefore, I cannot commit on this. I am sorry.

Simon Wright

#45. Simplification of modes of proof is not merely an indication of advance in our knowledge of a subject, but is also the surest guarantee of readiness for farther progress.

Lord Kelvin

#46. Simplification establishes an unspoken emphasis on relationship.

Kim John Payne

#47. The simplification of anything is always sensational.

G.K. Chesterton

#48. Certain environments, certain modes of life, and certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification is one of them.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

#49. Culture has never the translucidity of custom; it abhors all simplification. In its essence it is opposed to custom, for custom is always the deterioration of culture.

Frantz Fanon

#50. And the Black Swan is what we leave out of simplification.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#51. I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.

Zadie Smith

#52. The unschooled European mind, inclined to rational reduction, to pigeonholing and simplification, readily pushes everything African into a single bag and is content with facile stereotypes.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

#53. 24. O sancta simplicitas! In what strange simplification and falsification man lives! One can never cease wondering when once one has got eyes for beholding this marvel! How we have made everything around us clear and free and easy and simple!

Friedrich Nietzsche

#54. Simplification of the tax code would not only unlock dormant economic potential, but, in the process, it would blunt the preferred weapon of social engineers, who reward favored industries, punish success and distort economic incentives.

David Harsanyi

#55. The simplification of life is one of the steps to inner peace. A persistent simplification will create an inner and outer well-being that places harmony in one's life.

Peace Pilgrim

#56. I believe Buddhism to be a simplification of Hinduism and Islam to be a simplification of Xianity.

C.S. Lewis

#57. Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

Martin H. Fischer

#58. The Procrustean bed in life consists precisely in simplifying the non-linear and making it linear - the simplification that distorts.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#59. The extreme positions of the Crossfire Syndrome require extreme simplification - framing the debate in terms which ignore the real issues.

Michael Crichton

#60. Thoreau wrote, "Simplify! Simplify!" And, indeed, simplification is one mark of real genius.

Dan Ariely

#61. Art, science, philosophy, religion
each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience.

Edward Abbey

#62. The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

Karl Popper

#63. simplification often makes the difference between good and amazing.

Shane Snow

#64. Ulysses ... is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.

E. M. Forster

#65. Memory is ... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

Alain De Botton

#66. Simplification is as much in the mind as it is in the device.

Donald A. Norman

#67. I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification.

G.K. Chesterton

#68. Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power.

Eric Hoffer

#69. That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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

Thomas Mann

#71. If you look at the mythology of aliens, there's a lot about gold. It's about them coming for gold; whether that's a simplification or not. If you think of 'Chariot of the Gods,' there's this reoccurring theme of gold.

Jon Favreau

#72. For every death is a simplification of existence for the others, removes the necessity to show gratitude, the obligation to pay visits.

Marcel Proust

#73. Sometimes the best solution is simplification.

Bobby Bragan

#74. One charming characteristic of many flank attacks I could mention is that they do not very often lead to simplification: if the attack is parried, there usually are still opportunities left for initiating action in another sector.

Bent Larsen

#75. My characters have undergone the same process of simplification as the colors. Now that they have been simplified, they appear more human and alive than if they had been represented in all their details.

Joan Miro

#76. There is one simplification at least. Electrons behave ... in exactly the same way as photons; they are both screwy, but in exactly in the same way ...

Richard P. Feynman

#77. The labeling of nociceptors as pain fibers was not an admirable simplification, but an unfortunate trivialization under the guise of simplification.

Patrick David Wall

#78. It's hard to see any institutional structure that stands in the way of the homogenization and simplification of the supply chains in international capitalism, unless it is the nation state.

James C. Scott

#79. A short story is simplification to the highest degree

Henry Seidel Canby

#80. The theorizing mind tends always to the over-simplification of its materials. This is the root of all that absolutism and one-sided dogmatism by which both philosophy and religion have been infested.

William James

#81. But what is striking about this, in a town that often talks about tax cuts, we could quite easily, Republicans and Democrats working together, do something that everybody in America desires, and that is a simplification of our Tax Code.

Richard Neal

#82. Culture is a simplification and a lie. It's the currency by which fools navigate the world. Smart people get beyond it.

Terence McKenna

#83. A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#84. Government systems suffer from two weaknesses. They are complex. And they are slow. We need to change this. Our systems need to be made sharp, effective, fast and flexible. This requires simplification of processes and having trust in citizens. This needs a Policy Driven State.

Narendra Modi

#85. It would seem that more than function itself, simplicity is the deciding factor in the aesthetic equation. One might call the process beauty through function and simplification.

Raymond Loewy

#86. It is easy to talk about tax simplification, and we all know it is very difficult to accomplish; but for the last three Congresses, I have offered a tax simplification bill that would include a paid-for repeal of alternative minimum tax.

Richard Neal

#87. The Structure of Magic I by Richard Bandler and John Grinder is a delightful simplification of the infinite complexities of the language I use with patients. In reading this book, I learned a great deal about the things that I've done without knowing about them.

Milton H. Erickson

#88. To say that the whole of the industrial experience of Europe and America just shows the rewards of exploiting the Third World is a gross simplification.

Amartya Sen

#89. The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as the modern painter learns to draw, and then learns when utterly to disregard his accomplishment, when to subordinate it to a higher and truer effect.

Willa Cather

#90. Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.

John Kenneth Galbraith

#91. ...there are often many things we feel we should do that, in fact, we don't really have to do. Getting to the point where we can tell the difference is a major milestone in the simplification process.

Elaine St. James

#92. There are elements of intrinsic beauty in the simplification of a house built on the log cabin idea.

Gustav Stickley

#93. Every attempt to explain human behavior, especially the irrational, must as a matter of course end in simplification.

Morton Irving Seiden

#94. One of the things I've been working on for the past few months is a radical simplification of the interface,

Matt Mullenweg

#95. Artistic simplicity is more complex than artistic complexity for it arises via the simplification of the latter and against its backdrop or system.

Yuri Lotman

#96. Rebelling against the status quo was one of the definitions of conservatism.

Rick Perlstein

#97. When we simplify, we are attending to our minds. Clear
minds lead to creativity, vision, health, and productivity.

Angela Lynne Craig