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Simplicity Quotes

Browse 2142 quotes about Simplicity.

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Simplicity Quotes

“Poverty is mean and degrading to the human spirit, whereas a life of conscious simplicity can have both a beauty and a functional integrity that elevates the human spirit.”

HumansMeanSpiritSimplePovertyIntegrityConsciousSimplicityHuman SpiritSimple LivingDegrading
Book:Voluntary Simplicity Second Revised Edition: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich
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“I now want to tell three stories about advances in twentieth-century physics. A curious fact emerges in these tales: time and again physicists have been guided by their sense of beauty not only in developing new theories but even in judging the validity of physical theories once they are developed. Simplicity is part of what I mean by beauty, but it is a simplicity of ideas, not simplicity of a mechanical sort that can be measured by counting equations or symbols.”

WantMeanHas BeensArtIdeasFactsStoriesThreeBeautyCenturyJudgingTheoryCuriositySimplicityPhysicsTalesCuriousSymbolsDevelopingEquationsPhysicistTwentieth CenturyCountingValidity
Author:Steven Weinberg
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“My own personal task is not simply that of poet and writer (still less commentator, pseudo-prophet); it is basically to praise God out of an inner center of silence, gratitude, and 'awareness.' This can be realized in a life that apparently accomplishes nothing. Without centering on accomplishment or nonaccomplishment, my task is simply the breathing of this gratitude from day to day, in simplicity, and for the rest turning my hand to whatever comes, work being part of praise, whether splitting logs or writing poems, or best of all simple notes.”

WritingStillsHandsMy OwnSimpleSilenceAwarenessPoetGratitudeTasksPraiseNotesSimplicityAccomplishBreathingAccomplishmentProphetDay To DayCommentatorsPseudoSplittingPraise GodWriting PoemsCenteringAccomplish Nothing
Author:Thomas Merton
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“Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him.”

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Author:Wolfgang Pauli
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“What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating.”

PeopleArtQualityPrinciplesStudyTheoryAppreciateDifficultyMathematicsSimplicityDefinedMathematicalSpiteAcceptablePhysicistRelativityTheories Of RelativityMathematical Beauty
Book:Sammlung
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“I long for the simplicity of theatre. I want lessons learned, comeuppances delivered, people sorted out, all before your bladder gets distractingly full. That's what I want. What I know is what we all know, whether we'll admit it or not: every attempt to impose the roundness of a well-made play on reality produces a disaster. Life just isn't so, nor will it be made so.”

PeopleKnowsWantWellsLongMadePlayRealityProduceLessonsSimplicityTheatreDisasterLesson LearnedBladderComeuppance
Author:John M. Ford
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“It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.”

MenFirstsWellsMeanTwoImportantIdeasRememberValuesSimpleNumbersEducationPositionGeniusTenAchievementAppreciateIndiaAbsolutesMathematicsMethodProfoundSimplicityAppreciationMathInventionSymbolsMathematicalEaseMeritReceivingGrandeurAntiquityIngeniousArithmeticComputationNumbers And MathGreatest ManGreat Math
Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
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“I loved the quiet places in Kyoto, the places that held the world within a windless moment. Inside the temples, Nature held her breath. All longing was put to sleep in the stillness, and all was distilled into a clean simplicity. The smell of woodsmoke, the drift of incense; a procession of monks in black-and-gold robes, one of them giggling in a voice yet unbroken; a touch of autumn in the air, a sense of gathering rain.”

WorldMomentsBlackVoiceSleepAirQuietRainGoldBreathsLongingCleanSimplicitySmellTemplesAutumnStillnessGatheringMonkRobesUnbrokenProcessionIncenseKyotoQuiet Place
Author:Pico Iyer
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“Heaven is weary of the luxury of China. I shall remain in the wilderness of the north. I shall return to simplicity and moderations once again. As for the clothes I wear and the food I eat, I shall have the same as cowherds and grooms and I shall treat my soldiers as brothers. In a hundred battles I have been at the forefront and within seven years I have performed a great work, for in six directions of space all things are subject to one ruler.”

YearsHas BeensHeavenSpaceSubjectsBrotherReturnBattleSixClothesHundredAll ThingsTreatsSevenSimplicitySoldierChinaLuxuryWildernessRulersWearyModerationSeven YearsGreat WorkMy Soldier
Author:Genghis Khan
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“Psychosynthesis brings the matter to a point of extreme simplicity, seeing the self as the most elementary and distinctive part of our beings - in other words, its core. This core is of an entirely different nature from all the elements (physical sensations, feelings, thoughts and so on) that make up our personality. As a consequence, it can act as a unifying center, directing those element and bring them into the unity of an organic wholeness.”

DifferentSelfMatterFeelingsSeeingPersonalityElementsConsequenceUnitySimplicityExtremesCoreSensationsWholenessDistinctiveUnifying
Author:Piero Ferrucci
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“There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities...more worthy to express the invariable relations of all natural things [than mathematics]. [It interprets] all phenomena by the same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident that unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes”

IfsStillsOrderUniverseLanguageCausesNaturalSimplePlansUniversalRelationMathematicsErrorsUnitySimplicityWorthyEvidentObscurityNatural ThingsUnchangeable
Author:Joseph Fourier
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“Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.”

ArtFeelingsInspirationPastCreativeUltimateMathematicsInspiredSimplicityMathematicalMathematicianUsefulnessSymmetryGeneralitiesIndefinable
Book:The queen of the sciences
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