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Simplification Quotes

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Simplification Quotes

“We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We're difficult to ourselves, we're difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most “intellectual” piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are? Why does music, why does poetry have to address us in simplified terms, when if such simplification were applied to a description of our own inner selves we would find it demeaning?”

IfsShouldHumansDoeRealSelfDifficultTermHuman BeingsPiecesMysteryPaintingIntellectualOrdinaryDifficultyEncountersProseAddressesDescriptionInner SelfSimplificationDemeaningOrdinary Days
Author:Geoffrey Hill
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“The Declaration of Independence is the all-time masterpiece of ideological simplification. There in a single sentence of self-evident truth, the founding Fathers put into clear, easily understandable focus, the broad basis of man's relationship to God, to government, and to his fellow man.”

MenSelfGovernmentFatherHistoryClearFocusBasesFellowsIndependenceSentencesAll TimeBroadsEvidentDeclarationMasterpieceFoundingFellow ManIdeologicalDeclaration Of IndependenceSimplificationSingle Sentence
Author:Clarence Manion
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“There are a whole other range of sciences that must deal with the narrative reconstruction of the inordinately complex events of history that can occur but once in their detailed glory. And for those kinds of sciences, be it cosmology, or evolutionary biology, or geology, or palaeontology, the experimental methods, simplification, quantification, prediction and repetition of the experimental sciences don't always work. You have to go with the narrative, the descriptive methods of what? Of historians.”

KindWholeDealsEventsGloryMethodComplexesNarrativeRangeBiologyHistorianRepetitionPredictionsCosmologyGeologyReconstructionSimplificationEvolutionary BiologyExperimental Science
Author:Richard Lewontin
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“... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.”

FirstsPersonsRealCharacterFeelingsJoyUnderstandingEmotionFictionEssentialsElementsImprovementNovelistsMisfortunesEvokeFactualReal PersonSimplificationSuppressing
Author:Marcel Proust
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“One of the most important skills of the economist, therefore, is that of simplification of the model. Two important methods of simplification have been developed by economists. One is the method of partial equilibrium analysis (or microeconomics), generally associated with the name of Alfred Marshall and the other is the method of aggregation (or macro-economics), associated with the name of John Maynard Keynes.”

Has BeensTwoImportantNamesSkillsModelsEconomicsMethodAnalysisEconomistEquilibriumSimplificationKeynesMacroMicroeconomics
Author:Kenneth E. Boulding
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“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.”

ShouldTryingWellsFactsSimplicityComplicatedLogicalHypothesisMaximsProceduresRazorsSimplificationSounder
Book:Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism
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“Psychoanalysis provides truth in an infantile, that is, a schoolboy fashion: we learn from it, roughly and hurriedly, things that scandalize us and thereby command our attention. It sometimes happens, and such is the case here, that a simplification touching upon the truth, but cheaply, is of no more value than a lie. Once again we are shown the demon and the angel, the beast and the god locked in Manichean embrace, and once again man has been pronounced, by himself, not culpable.”

MenHas BeensSometimesHappensLyingValuesAttentionCasesFashionAngelEmbraceCommandBeastDemonTouchingLockedPsychoanalysisSimplificationInfantile
Book:His Master's Voice
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“It's a simplification to say that the men [during Stone Age] went to war to maintain their dominance over the women. The men would help dig agricultural ditches because they were superb farmers. That was very heavy lifting work. But then they just preened themselves, and put bird-of-paradise plumes [in their hair], and smoked dope.”

MenWarHelpingAgeHe ManHairBirdStonesHeavyParadiseFarmersLiftingDominanceDopeSuperbSimplificationStone AgeHeavy Lifting
Author:Peter Matthiessen
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“By sort of combining the research of a lot of smart people, I came up with an equation for dread [dread=uncontrollability+unfamiliarity+imaginability+suffering+scale of destruction+unfairness]. The dread equation is a simplification, but it's a way to explain why we fear something so much when it is so unlikely. Part of it is the lack of control. That's why we're more scared of plane crashes than car crashes even though we know rationally which is more dangerous.”

PeopleKnowsWaySufferingDangerousCarSmartResearchDestructionScaredScalesPlanesDreadCrashEquationsUnlikelySmart PeopleCombiningSimplificationUnfairnessCar CrashPlane CrashesLack Of Control
Author:Amanda Ripley
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“In mathematical science, more than in all others, it happens that truths which are at one period the most abstract, and apparently the most remote from all useful application, become in the next age the bases of profound physical inquiries, and in the succeeding one, perhaps, by proper simplification and reduction to tables, furnish their ready and daily aid to the artist and the sailor.”

HappensAgeArtistNextReadyPeriodsSucceedBasesTablesProfoundAidsMathematicalAbstractApplicationInquirySailorReductionSimplification
Book:Reflections on the decline of science in England and on some of its causes: with a new appendix of correspondence by Charles Babbage & Peter M. Roget from the Philosophical magazine
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“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. For me this began with a discovery of the meaninglessness of possessions beyond my actual and immediate needs. As soon as I had brought myself down to need level, I began to feel a wonderful harmony in my life between inner and outer well-being, between spiritual and material well-being.”

NeedsFeelsWellsSpiritualLife IsLevelsStepsWonderfulMaterialsDiscoveryHarmonyPossessionInner PeaceWell BeingPersistentSimplificationMeaninglessness
Book:Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words
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“Like medieval theologians we had a philosophy that explained everything to us in advance, and everything that did not fit could be readily identified as a fraud or a lie or an illusion... The perniciousness of the anti-Communist ideology of the Truman Doctrine arises not from any patent falsehood but from its distortion and simplification of reality, from its universalization and its elevation to the status of a revealed truth.”

PhilosophyRealityLyingFitIllusionAriseDoctrineIdeologyCommunistFraudFalsehoodTheologianMedievalDistortionPatentsElevationSimplificationTrumanAnti Communist
Author:J. William Fulbright
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“In the first round of work simplification...you can reasonably expect a 30 to 50 percent reduction...To implement the actual simplification, you must question why each step is performed. Typically, you will find that many steps exist in your work flow for no good reason. Often they are there by tradition or because formal procedure ordains it, and nothing practical ordains it.”

FirstsReasonStepsPercentTraditionFlowRoundsPracticalsFormalProceduresReductionSimplificationWork Flow
Author:Andy Grove
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“Faith transcends reason because divine truth is not only higher, but also wider than the human mind, and the rationalist in his haste for premature simplification always tends to shut his eyes to one aspect of the truth and to seek a false harmony of thought by the sacrifice of an essential element of reality.”

MindHumansReasonRealityEyeSacrificeDivineHigherTruth IsEssentialsElementsAspectHarmonyHis EyesHuman MindHastePrematureSimplification
Author:Christopher Dawson
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“I think part of the bad thing is that skill is emphasized so much that a lot of people, by the time they get to Juilliard, well I think they kind of forget why they got into music in the first place and if they're performers - this is a simplification, but a lot of them are trying to win a competition and play more accurately, or better, or more beautifully, whatever can be measured, than somebody else.”

PeopleIfsThinkingTryingFirstsWellsKindPlayWinningForgetSkillsCompetitionBad ThingsPerformersSimplificationJuilliard
Author:Tod Machover
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“The economic union - creating a big common market, like the United States, so that you can compete across borders. There are common rules, regulations, and simplification, and that is still a good reason, too. When they put their monetary union together, that created a rigidity that made it hard for currency fluctuations. They don't really have a solution to that.”

MadeStillsHardStatesReasonBigsTogetherUnitedCommonUnited StatesEconomicCreatingSolutionsUnionsMade ItBordersRegulationCurrencyMonetaryRigiditySimplificationFluctuation
Author:Jamie Dimon
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“Simplification seems to be the removal of objects for the goal of making a graphic as clean and uncluttered as possible. Whereas, with optimization, it feels like there's more intelligence in that. It maintains the usability, but tries to distill something down to its essence. But with some data-sets you have to be careful because, as with linear, print journalism, it's easy to shave off facts that don't quite fit the flow.”

TryingEasyGoalFitCarefulJournalismPrintBe CarefulGraphicRemovalSimplification
Author:David Mccandless
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“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.”

PeopleKnowsDiesKnow HowDignityMeaning Of LifeDragUnnecessaryMessySimplificationTrue MeaningComprehendingPruningTrue Meaning Of Life
Book:I Have the Right to Destroy Myself
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“The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth. However elegant and memorable, brevity can never, in the nature of things, do justice to all the facts of a complex situations. On such a theme one can be brief only by omission and simplification. Omission and simplification help us to understand - but help is, in many cases, to understand the wrong thing; for our comprehension may be only of the abbreviator's neatly formulated notions, not of the vast, ramifying reality from which these notions have been so arbitrarily abstracted.”

MayHas BeensRealSoulFactsHelpingBodyRealityJusticeSituationCasesComplexesNotionWitReal LifeMemorableThemeElegantComprehensionWrong ThingsBrevityUntruthSimplificationOmission
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“The underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us.”

WorldWantStillsTogetherValuesStruggleModernDiversitySacredEmbraceAncientOneselfCrueltyCertaintyPlentyJustifyFlagsSlogansInsistingSimplificationSacred Texts
Book:Dreams From My Father
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