Simplest Quotes - Page 3

• The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Fall, Science, Simple

  Alfred North Whitehead (1964). “The Concept of Nature: Tarner Lectures”, p.163, Cambridge University Press

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• One of the oldest secrets of alchemy is that every living thing, from the most complex creatures right down to the simplest leaf, carries the seeds of its creation within itself.

  Michael Scott

  Dna, Secret, Creation

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• Even from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries which we long for occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our actual life than the country in which we happen to be.

  Marcel Proust

  Country, Views, Long

  Marcel Proust (2015). “Swann's Way”, p.423, Vintage

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• If you set to work to believe everything, you will tire out the believing-muscles of your mind, and then you'll be so weak you won't be able to believe the simplest true things.

  Lewis Carroll

  Believe, Mind, Able

  Lewis Carroll, Roger Lancelyn Green (1989). “The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll”, p.28, Springer

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• Scientists often talk of parsimony (as in "the simplest explanation is probably correct," also known as Occam's razor), but we should not get seduced by the apparent elegance of argument from parsimony; this line of reasoning has failed in the past at least as many times as it has succeeded.

  David Eagleman

  Past, Razors, Lines

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain”, p.177, Canongate Books

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• The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.

  Frances Wright

  Errors, Practice, Mind

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• There were a number of definitions of courage, but now I was seeing it in its simplest form: you do what has to be done day after day, and you never quit.

  Eric Greitens

  Numbers, Done, Definitions

  Eric Greitens (2011). “The Heart and the Fist: The education of a humanitarian, the making of a Navy SEAL”, p.71, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn't make it less true.

  James Surowiecki

  Moving, Writing, Play

  "Face Time". www.newyorker.com. March 18, 2013.

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• I have a 'Play The Melody' philosophy. It means don't over arrange, don't make life difficult. Just play the melody-and do it the simplest way possible.

  Jackie Gleason

  Inspirational, Philosophy, Mean

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• The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.

  Thomas Sowell

  Way, Economy, Explanation

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.97, Basic Books

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• The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.

  Ernest Renan

  Life, Education, Teaching

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• The simplest fix for better grilling is to line the inside of your barbecue with tin foil. It dramatically affects how evenly the heat is distributed. That crusty black hibachi or Weber grill is doing your food no favors.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Black, Tin, Lines

  www.forbes.com. February 25, 2011.

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• The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

  C. S. Lewis

  Plato, Book, Greatness

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.217, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand. The word my grandfather uses is comfort. So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything. Give no story. Make no claim. Where you can live at the edge of your skin for as long as you wish.

  Alice Sebold

  Quilts, Humble, Hands

  Alice Sebold (2014). “The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic”, p.229, Pan Macmillan

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• Children, as persons, are entitled to the greatest respect. Children are given to us as free-flying souls, but then we clip their wings like we domesticate the wild mallard. Children should become the role-models for us, their parents, for they are coated with the spirit from which they came- out of the ether, clean, innocent, brimming with the delight of life, aware of the beauty of the simplest thing; a snail, a bud.

  Gerry Spence

  Children, Wings, Role Models

  Gerry Spence (1999). “Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century”, p.202, St. Martin's Press

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• I have set off and found that there is no end to even the simplest journey of the mind. I begin, and straight away a hundred alternative routes present themselves. I choose one, no sooner begin, than a hundred more appear. Every time I try to narrow down my intent I expand it, and yet those straits and canals still lead me to the open sea, and then I realize how vast it all is, this matter of the mind. I am confounded by the shining water and the size of the world.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Journey, Sea, Water

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.115, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful then a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Wise, Prayer, Powerful

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• After all, is it not the way we humans shape the universe, shape time itself? Do we not take the raw stuff of chaos and impose a beginning, middle, and end on it, like the simplest and most profound of folktales, to reflect the shapes of our own tiny lives? And if the physicists are right, that the physical world changes as it is observed, and we are its only known observers, then might we not be bending the entire chaotic universe, the eternal, ever-active Now, to fit that familiar form?

  Tad Williams

  Profound, Bending, World

  Tad Williams (2002). “Otherland 4: Sea of Silver Light”, p.584, Penguin

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• I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.

  Banana Yoshimoto

  Feelings, Important, Proud

  Banana Yoshimoto (2011). “The Lake”, p.183, Melville House

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• In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Grease, Wheels, Flattery

  Leo Tolstoy (2011). “War and Peace: Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky”, p.29, Vintage

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• Because music, like color, or a cloud, is neither intelligent nor unintelligent - it just is. The chord, the simplest building block for even the tritest, silliest chart song, is a beautiful, perfect, mysterious thing, and when an ill-read, uneducated, uncultured, emotionally illiterate boor puts a couple of them together, he has every chance of creating something wonderful and powerful. All I ask of music is that is sounds good.

  Nick Hornby

  Beautiful, Song, Couple

  Nick Hornby (2003). “31 songs”, Viking Books

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• His thoughts inhabit a different plane from those of ordinary men; the simplest interpretation of that is to call him crazy.

  Juliet Marillier

  Crazy, Men, Ordinary

  Juliet Marillier (2011). “The Dark Mirror”, p.552, Pan Macmillan

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• I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Truth, Lying, Science

  "What is Art?". Book by Leo Tolstoy, Ch. 14, 1897.

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• Come on back and we’ll see if you remember the simplest thing of all – how it is to be children, secure in belief and thus afraid of the dark.

  Stephen King

  Children, Dark, Belief

  Stephen King (2016). “It: A Novel”, p.908, Simon and Schuster

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• When multiple explanations exist, the simplest is usually correct.

  Dan Brown

  Multiple, Explanation

  Dan Brown (2006). “Deception Point”, p.298, Simon and Schuster

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