Simplicity Quotes - Page 25

• The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort.

  Seneca the Younger

  Luxury, Effort, Littles

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• Avoid fragmentation: Find your focus and seek simplicity. Purposeful living calls for elegant efficiency and economy of effort-expanding the minimum time and energy necessary to achieve desired goals.

  Dan Millman

  Goal, Effort, Focus

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• For men in a state of freedom had thatch for their shelter, while slavery dwells beneath marble and gold.

  Seneca the Younger

  Freedom, Men, Gold

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• The wise man then followed a simple way of life-which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this modern age he seeks to be as little encumbered as he possibly can.

  Seneca the Younger

  Life, Wise, Simple

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• Simplicity has power. Founding our life on constructive, positive behavior is the simplest, most direct, and powerful approach I've ever found-simple, but not easy.

  Dan Millman

  Life, Powerful, Simple

  Dan Millman (2010). “Living on Purpose: Straight Answers to Universal Questions”, p.124, New World Library

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• Science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  God, Science, Issues

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• What I'm really interested in is whether God could have made the world in a different way; that is, whether the necessity of logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all.

  Albert Einstein

  God, Different, World

  "The Scientific Imagination: Case Studies". Book by Gerald Holton, p. XII, 1978.

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• If I go out into nature, into the unknown, to the fringes of knowledge, everything seems mixed up and contradictory, illogical, and incoherent. This is what research does; it smooths out contradictions and makes things simple, logical, and coherent.

  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

  Knowledge, Science, Simple

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• In physics we deal with states of affairs much simpler than those of psychology and yet we again and again learn that our task is not to investigate the essence of things-we do not at all know what this would mean&mash;but to develop those concepts that allow us to speak with each other about the events of nature in a fruitful manner.

  Niels Bohr

  Knowledge, Mean, Science

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• It must be conceded that a theory has an important advantage if its basic concepts and fundamental hypotheses are 'close to experience,' and greater confidence in such a theory is certainly justified. There is less danger of going completely astray, particularly since it takes so much less time and effort to disprove such theories by experience. Yet more and more, as the depth of our knowledge increases, we must give up this advantage in our quest for logical simplicity in the foundations of physical theory.

  Albert Einstein

  Giving Up, Knowledge, Science

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.349, Broadway Books

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• In honoring the Wright Brothers, it is customary and proper to recognize their contribution to scientific progress. But I believe it is equally important to emphasize the qualities in their pioneering life and the character in man that such a life produced. The Wright Brothers balanced sucess with modesty, science with simplicity. At Kitty Hawk their intellects and senses worked in mutual support. They represented man in balance, and from that balance came wings to lift a world.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Success, Brother, Believe

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• Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.

  Edward Teller

  Nature, Science, Order

  Edward Teller (1981). “The Pursuit of Simplicity”, Pepperdine Press

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• The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relation between things.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Imagination, Imagine

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.22, Modern Library

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• The solutions put forth by imperialism are the quintessence of simplicity...When they speak of the problems of population and birth, they are in no way moved by concepts related to the interests of the family or of society...Just when science and technology are making incredible advances in all fields, they resort to technology to suppress revolutions and ask the help of science to prevent population growth. In short, the peoples are not to make revolutions, and women are not to give birth. This sums up the philosophy of imperialism.

  Fidel Castro

  Philosophy, Science, Technology

  "Fidel Castro". Book by Enrique Meneses, 1968.

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• A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression which classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content concerning which I am convinced that within the framework of the applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be overthrown.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Differences, Different

  Albert Einstein, Stephen W. Hawking (2007). “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein”, p.353, Running Press

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• The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

  Karl Popper

  Art, Science, Simple

  Karl Popper (2012). “The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.44, Routledge

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• At the outset do not be worried about this big question-Truth. It is a very simple matter if each one of you starts with the desire to get as much as possible. No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition. In this unsatisfied quest the attitude of mind, the desire, the thirst-a thirst that from the soul must arise!-the fervent longing, are the be-all and the end-all.

  William Osler

  Attitude, Science, Simple

  Sir William Osler (2001). “Osler's "a Way of Life" and Other Addresses, with Commentary and Annotations”, p.337, Duke University Press

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• Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:- so various yet so uniform-so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature's laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy.

  Roderick Murchison

  Nature, Mean, Science

  Roderick Impey Murchison (1839). “The silurian system, founded on geological researches in the counties of Salop, Hereford etc”, p.574

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• Montaigne simply turns his mind loose and writes whatever he feels like writing. Mostly, he wants to say that reason is not a special, unique gift of human beings, marking us off from the rest of nature.

  Lewis Thomas

  Nature, Writing, Science

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• Twelve Priceless Qualities of Success: 1. The value of time. 2. The success of perseverance. 3. The pleasure of working. 4. The dignity of simplicity. 5. The worth of character. 6. The power of kindness. 7. The influence of example. 8. The obligation of duty. 9. The wisdom of economy. 10. The virtue of patience. 11. The improvement of talent. 12. The joy of originating.

  Marshall Field

  Wisdom, Perseverance, Kindness

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• You may object that by speaking of simplicity and beauty I am introducing aesthetic criteria of truth, and I frankly admit that I am strongly attracted by the simplicity and beauty of mathematical schemes which nature presents us. You must have felt this too: the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationship, which nature suddenly spreads out before us.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Nature, Truth, Science

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• [When nature appears complicated:] The moment we contemplate it as it is, and attain a position from which we can take a commanding view, though but of a small part of its plan, we never fail to recognize that sublime simplicity on which the mind rests satisfied that it has attained the truth.

  John Herschel

  Nature, Truth, Science

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• During the time that [Karl] Landsteiner gave me an education in the field of imununology, I discovered that he and I were thinking about the serologic problem in very different ways. He would ask, What do these experiments force us to believe about the nature of the world? I would ask, What is the most. simple and general picture of the world that we can formulate that is not ruled by these experiments? I realized that medical and biological investigators were not attacking their problems the same way that theoretical physicists do, the way I had been in the habit of doing.

  Linus Pauling

  Nature, Believe, Science

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• But it is just this characteristic of simplicity in the laws of nature hitherto discovered which it would be fallacious to generalize, for it is obvious that simplicity has been a part cause of their discovery, and can, therefore, give no ground for the supposition that other undiscovered laws are equally simple.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Simple, Discovery

  Bertrand Russell (1981). “Mysticism and Logic, and Other Essays”, p.78, Rowman & Littlefield

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• It is remarkable that when great discoveries are effected, their simplicity always seems to detract from their originality: on these occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus!

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Science, Discovery, Eggs

  Isaac Disraeli, Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1861). “Curiosities of literature”, p.331

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