- “The most creative approach is often the simple approach.” ― Phil Cooke
- “…pretention is very close to stupidity and that simplicity has a less visible but still gratifying aspect.” ― Marcel Proust, Time Regained
- “If you truly believe in your simplicity & innocense, and wish to retain it, figure out something that you can practice for 10-12 hours a day; you will certainly be heading towards the path of Greatness.” ― Sandeep Sahajpal, The Twelfth Preamble: To all the authors to be!
- He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. Epictetus
- “Do you want to be happy?Then make your life as soulfully simple As sleeplessly breathing.” ― Sri Chinmoy, The Wings of Joy: Finding Your Path to Inner Peace
- Pride divides the men, humility joins them. Socrates
- “The inner reality is not a reality until there is an outward expression.” ― Richard Foster
- Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. Robert Brault
- “He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.” ― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
- “Thankfulness is the life of contentment.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
- Simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world. Oscar Wilde
- “Good design is as little as possible. Less, but better, because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.” ― Dieter Rams, Weniger, Aber Besser/Less But Better
- “I woke up early and took the first train to take me away from the city. The noise and all its people. I was alone on the train and had no idea where I was going, and that’s why I went there. Two hours later we arrived in a small town, one of those towns with one single coffee shop and where everyone knows each other’s name. I walked for a while until I found the water, the most peaceful place I know. There I sat and stayed the whole day, with nothing and everything on my mind, cleaning my head. Silence, I learned, is some times the most beautiful sound.” ― Charlotte Eriksson
- Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort. Edward de Bono
- Anything that costs you your peace is too expensive. Unknown
- “People often associate complexity with deeper meaning, when often after precious time has been lost, it is realized that simplicity is the key to everything.” ― Gary Hopkins
- “If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness is always a problem. If people have some story or news to tell somebody else, first of all they are either excited or disappointed. Then they begin to figure out how to tell their news. They develop a plan, which leads them completely away from simply telling it. By the time a person hears the news, it is not news at all, but opinion. It becomes a message of some kind, rather than fresh, straightforward news. Decency is the absence of strategy. It is of utmost importance to realize that the warrior’s approach should be simple-minded sometimes, very simple and straightforward. That makes it very beautiful: you having nothing up your sleeve; therefore a sense of genuineness comes through. That is decency.” ― Chögyam Trungpa
- “If the forest were covered with ten times the number of blue markers I had seen on my hike, the probability of my getting lost would certainly be reduced. One could imagine the markers organized in a more symbolic shape—say a real arrow, instead of a cryptic linear marker. And if we wish to go that far, why not just paint the more explicit text, “This way,” on the rocks in 100-point Helvetica so there’s no ambiguity whatsoever? Yet at some point, with the successive addition of more sophisticated elements, the true value of the untainted forest suddenly vanishes.” ― John Maeda, The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life
- We can travel a long way and do many things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences. It is born from letting go of what is unnecessary, and knowing ourselves to be always at home. Sharon Salzberg
- I think we’ve been oversold the value of more and undersold the value of less. Greg McKeown
- True elegance for me is the manifestation of an independent mind. Isabella Rossellini
- Less is more. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
- “Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals.” ― George Eliot, Middlemarch
- “The key to creating a successful system is to make it as uncomplicated as possible.” ― Geralin Thomas, Decluttering Your Home: Tips, Techniques and Trade Secrets
- “Simplicity protects people from Carnal Slavery!” ― Bruce Mbanzabugabo
- “The simplicity of love is beautiful.” ― Adrienne Posey
- “Etienne’s main idea that all government and private sector interfaces should be clarified and simplified is a sound one. (George Shultz, former Secretary of State, Treasury and Labor)” ― Etienne Deffarges, Untangling the USA: The Cost of Complexity and What Can Be Done About It
- “Bless the animals, their simple ways, for they remind us what is real.” ― Marty Rubin
- “The Master said, “Wealth and honor are things that all people desire, and yet unless they are acquired in the proper way I will not abide them. Poverty and disgrace are things that all people hate, and yet unless they are avoided in the proper way I will not despise them. “If the gentleman abandons ren, how can he be worthy of that name? The gentleman does not violate ren even for the amount of time required to eat a meal. Even in times of urgency or distress, he does not depart from it.”(Analects 4.5)” ― Confucius
- “The theory that any idea that takes more than ten minutes to communicate is probably too complicated to be any good” ― W. Chan Kim, Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant