Simplicity Quotes

All things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.

All you need is less.

It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint Exupery

Successful living is an endless quest for the simple, the clear, the true.

The older I grow the more I perceive the dignity and winning beauty of simplicity in thought, conduct and speech; a desire to simplify all that is complicated and to treat everything in the greatest naturalness and clarity.

Simplify, and add lightness.

If men would give less attention to the artificial, and would cultivate greater simplicity, they would come far nearer to answering the purpose of God in their creation.

Ellen G White

Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity.

Occams Razor

You can always recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity.

Feynman

Simplicity hinges as much on cutting nonessential features as on adding helpful ones.

Walter Bender

Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means.

Koichi Kawana

Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Owning less is better than organizing more.

Joshua Becker

Simplicity boils down to two things: identify the essential, and eliminate the rest.

Leo Babauta

Deciding what NOT to do is as important as deciding what TO do.

Steve Jobs

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have, the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom.

Mother Teresa

The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don’t.

Joshua Becker

Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.

Isaac Newton

Live simply so that others may simply live.

Mahatma Gandhi

Religion is the search for order and simplicity.

The hoarder is slave to his hoard.

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

Thomas Mann

A quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest.

Einstein

The highest level of mastery is simplicity. Most information is irrelevant and most effort is wasted, but only the expert knows what to ignore.

James Clear

Keep an empty shelf and keep a junk drawer.

I think about life as having three things at least that I think are really important. One of them is increasing simplicity. Just sheer simplicity. Two is time in flow state. The third is time with people I love.

Jim Collins

Anything that agitates is clutter.

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day…So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.

Thoreau

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Socrates

It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town…he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.

Thoreau

My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.

Francine Jay

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

Bruce Lee

The life of Christ was a life of humble simplicity, yet how infinitely exalted was his mission. Christ is our example in all things.

Ellen G White

Stop doing all the things.

As I did not have time to write you a short letter, I have written you a long one instead.

Mark Twain

Accomplish more by working less.

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

William Morris

Less is best.

Less is more.

More effort is wasted doing things that don’t matter than is wasted doing things inefficiently. Elimination is the highest form of optimization.

James Clear

Work can best be understood by practicing it in simplicity.

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

Einstein

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Leonardo da Vinci

Nature is pleased with simplicity.

Isaac Newton

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

Eleanor Roosevelt

You are what you keep.

A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Eliminate whatever distracts you from God.

You know you’ve achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.

Anotine de Saint-Exupery

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.

E F Schumacker

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Hans Hofmann

The great artist and thinker are the simplifiers.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.

Victor Hugo

A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life.

Winston Churchill

Anything simple always interests me.

David Hockney

As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.

Durer

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

Thoreau

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.

Plato

Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information.

Edward Tuft

Don’t make the process harder than it is.

Jack Welch

Enjoy the simple, the natural and the plain. Along with that comes the ability to do things spontaneously and have them work.

Benjamin Hoff

Everything is both simpler than we can imagine, and more complicated that we can conceive.

Goethe

Everything is complex and everything is simple. The rose has no why attached to it, it blooms because it blooms, how no thought of itself, or desire to be seen. What could be more complicated than a rose for someone who wants to understand it? What could be simpler for someone who wants nothing? The complexity of thinking, the simplicity of beholding.

Andre Comte-Sponville

From native simplicity we arrive at more profound simplicity.

Albert Schweitzer

For the more limited, if adequate, is always preferable.

Aristotle

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.

William Shenstone

How many things are there which I do not want.

Socrates

I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things in life which are the real ones after all.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

I don’t need a lot of money. Simplicity is the answer for me.

Linda McCartney

I have a simple philosophy. Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. And scratch where it itches.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth

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

Lao Tzu

I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments, certain modes of life, 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 of life is one of them.

Ann Morrow Lindbergh

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.

Wu-Men

In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.

Henry Wadsworth

Is it not in the most absolute simplicity that real genius plies its pinions the most wonderfully?

E T A Hoffmann

When I was young, I craved variety and novelty; now in my old age, I have come to understand that simplicity is the ultimate goal of art.

Durer

It is not how much space there is, but rather how it is used. It is not how much information there is, but rather how effectively it is organized.

Edward Tufte

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

Aristotle

Let us learn to live simply, so that others may simply live.

Mahatma Gandhi

Life is beautiful in its simplicity.

Thomas Matthiessen

Live simply that others might simply live.

Elizabeth Seaton

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.

Charles Mingus

I believe we would be happier to have a personal revolution in our individual lives and go back to simpler living and more direct thinking. It is the simple things of life that make living worthwhile, the sweet fundamental things such as love and duty, work and rest, and living close to nature.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.

Lao Tzu

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.

Albert Einstein

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have even lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.

Thoreau

My philosophy? Simplicity plus variety.

Hank Stram

Nature is what we know – Yet have not art to say – So impotent our wisdom is - To her simplicity.

Emily Dickinson

Never again will I make the simple into the complex. Something of true value does not become more valuable because it becomes complicated. Experience and conditions come and go; complications arise and fall away, but the simple action of God is eternal in the universe.

Donald Curtis

Nobility of spirit has more to do with simplicity than ostentation, wisdom rather than wealth, commitment rather than ambition.

Riccardo Muti

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is true, but that which is simple.

Johann Wolfgang

Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.

Mark Twain

Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.

Edwin Way Teale

Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.

W Somerset Maugham

Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.

Frank Lloyd Wright

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

Tolstoy

’Think simple’ as my old master used to say – meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Albert Einstein

Real wealth, security, and contentment come not from the trinkets we amass but from how we spend the one life we’ve been given.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.

Thoreau

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter … to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring—these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

John Burroughs

To simplify complications is the first essential of success.

George Earle Buckle

Enough is as good as a feast.

Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. If you have them, you have to take care of them! There is great freedom in simplicity of living. It is those who have enough but not too much who are the happiest.

Peace Pilgrim

Embarrass de richesse – a superfluity of something, more than one needs or wants.

Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.

John Kabat-Zinn

We don’t need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants. Not wanting something is as good as possessing it.

Donald Horban

When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.

Jacob Lawrence

Simplicity, clarity, singleness: these are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy.

Richard Halloway

Simplicity does not mean want or poverty. It does not mean the absence of any decor, or absolute nudity. It only means that the decor should belong intimately to the design proper, and that anything foreign to it should be taken away.

Paul Jacques Grillo

I make myself rich by making my wants few.

Thoreau

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.

Charles Dudley Warner

Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.

Paul Rand

Simplicity is the glory of expression.

Walt Whitman

Simplicity is the key.

Ritchie Blackmore

Simplicity is the key to brilliance.

Bruce Lee

Simplicity is the nature of great souls.

Papa Ramadas

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as one, two, three and to a hundred or a thousand… We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

Thoreau

The easiest way to organize your stuff is to get rid of most of it.

Simplicity is an exact medium between too little and too much.

Joshua Reynold

Simplicity is indeed often the sign of truth and a criterion of beauty.

Mahlon Hoagland

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

Frederic Chopin

I love a broad margin to my life.

Thoreau

The best feature is less features.

Kevin Systrom

Have less. Do more.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Things taste better in small houses.

Queen Victoria

Creativity sits in the absence of consumption.

The ultimate form of optimization is elimination. Nothing is more effective than removing the ineffective.

James Clear

There are two ways to be rich. One is by acquiring much, and the other is by desiring little.

Jackie French Koller

Love people and use things, because the opposite never works.

The Minimalists

The half is better than the whole.

One’s life is frittered away by detail…Simplify, simplify.

Thoreau

Plainness was not necessarily simplicity…Elimination…may be just as meaningless as elaboration, perhaps more often is so. To know what to leave out and what to put in; just where and just how…that is to have been educated in knowledge of simplicity.

F L Wright

The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable.

Sol LeWitt

The multiplicity of facts and writings is becoming so great, that every thing must soon be reduced to extracts.

Voltaire