Parsimony Quotes

• Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

  Edmund Burke

  Commitment, Essentials, May

  Edmund Burke (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)”, p.3780, Delphi Classics

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• There is nothing worse than being ashamed of parsimony or poverty.

  Livy

  Poverty, Ashamed

  "History of Rome". Book by Livy. Book XXXIV, section 4,

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• A parsimony of words prodigal of sense.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Brevity, Prodigals

  Isaac Disraeli, Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1860). “Curiosities of Literature”, p.360

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• If time is money, it seems moral to save time, above all one's own, and such parsimony is excused by consideration for others. One is straight-forward.

  Theodor Adorno

  Moral, Consideration, Time Is Money

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.41, Verso

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• 

  Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Funny, Witty

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• With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich.

  Seneca the Younger

  Money, Men, Littles

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• Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distinctive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection.

  Edmund Burke

  Essentials, Saving, May

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• I would rather be a beggar and spend my money like a king, than be a king and spend money like a beggar.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Money, Kings, Beggar

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1898). “Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll: Including His Letters on the Chinese God--Is Suicide a Sin?--The Right to One's Life--etc. Etc. Etc”

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• The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.

  Philip K. Dick

  Simple, Principles, Facts

  Philip K. Dick (2011). “VALIS”, p.16, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.

  Edmund Burke

  Saving, Judgment, Virtue

  Edmund Burke (1834). “The Beauties of Burke, Consisting of Selections from His Works”, p.59

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• In my view, the argument from parsimony is really no argument at all - it typically functions only to shut down more interesting discussion. If history is any guide, it's never a good idea to assume that a scientific problem is cornered.

  David Eagleman

  Ideas, Views, Interesting

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain”, p.178, Canongate Books

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• The principle of parsimony is valid esthetically in that the artist must not go beyond what is needed for his purpose.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Artist, Principles, Purpose

  Rudolf Arnheim (1954). “Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye”, p.46, Univ of California Press

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• While society cannot provide employment for its members, the production/work/income nexus has to be abandoned as a justification for our present parsimony to the unemployed. An assumption cannot be used to justify making second-class citizens of those who are unfortunate enough to constitute living proof of the inaccuracy of that assumption.

  Bob Hawke

  Leadership, Class, Income

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• It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine.

  Richard Dawkins

  Crazy, Smell, Mad

  "Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC1 Television, 1996.

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• Parsimony is enough to make the master of the golden mines as poor as he that has nothing; for a man may be brought to a morsel of bread by parsimony as well as profusion.

  Henry Home, Lord Kames

  Men, May, Golden

  Henry Home (lord Kames.) (1818). “Introduction to the art of thinking, to which is prefixed an original life of the author”, p.96

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• My father died when I was two years old. But my mother was quite capable. She raised three children with his war pension which was peanuts. Yet we did not want for anything. We grew up with a certain parsimony, which is a nice thing. Then if life gives you more good, otherwise you get used to. I'm still thrifty.

  Giulio Andreotti

  Mother, Children, Father

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• Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigalityand misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not onlyaffords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands?but?he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come.

  Adam Smith

  Men, Hands, Numbers

  1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, bk.2, ch.3.

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• Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but in selection.

  Edmund Burke

  Saving, Virtue, Economy

  Edmund Burke (1834). “The Beauties of Burke, Consisting of Selections from His Works”, p.59

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• It is more parsimonious to assume that the sun goes around the Earth, that atoms at the smallest scale operate in accordance with the same rules that objects at larger scales follow, and that we perceive what is really out there. All of these positions were long defended by argument from parsimony, and they were all wrong.

  David Eagleman

  Long, Earth, Sun

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

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• What in the rising man was industry and economy, becomes in the rich man parsimony and avarice.

  Sarah Josepha Hale

  Men, Greed, Rising

  Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1832). “Ladies' Magazine and Literary Gazette”, p.156

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• Evolutionary biologists often appeal to parsimony when they seek to explain why organisms "match" with respect to a given trait. For example, why do almost all the organisms that are alive today on our planet use the same genetic code? If they share a common ancestor, the code could have evolved just once and then been inherited from the most recent common ancestor that present organisms share. On the other hand, if organisms in different species share no common ancestors, the code must have evolved repeatedly.

  Elliott Sober

  Hands, Live For Today, Example

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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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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• Nothing perhaps has so retarded the reception of the higher conclusions of Geology among men in general, as ... [the] instinctive parsimony of the human mind in matters where time is concerned.

  Charles Lapworth

  Time, Science, Men

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