Simplification Quotes - Page 2

• Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

  Alain de Botton

  Memories, Anticipation, Instruments

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• Intellectuals ... regard over-simplification as the original sin of the mind and have no use for the slogans, the unqualified assertions and sweeping generalizations.

  Aldous Huxley

  Mind, Use, Unqualified

  Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2002). “Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948”, Ivan R. Dee Publisher

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• If western culture is shown to be rich it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to "dissolve" harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind.

  Umberto Eco

  Mind, Enlightenment, Western Culture

  "The roots of conflict" by Umberto Eco, www.theguardian.com. October 13, 2001.

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• All the above is, of course, a gross simplification. There are deeper reasons to travel - itches and tickles on the underbelly of the unconscious mind. We go where we need to go, and then try to figure out what we're doing there.

  Jeff Greenwald

  Travel, Mind, Trying

  Jeff Greenwald (2014). “Shopping for Buddhas: An Adventure in Nepal”, p.13, Travelers' Tales

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• I believe Buddhism to be a simplification of Hinduism and Islam to be a simplification of Xianity.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Buddhism, Islam

  Letter to Sheldon Vanauken on December 14, 1950. "Sleuthing C.S. Lewis: More Light in the Shadowlands". Book by Kathryn Ann Lindskoog, p. 393, 2001.

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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.

  Andy Grove

  Flow, Firsts, Steps

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• The labeling of nociceptors as pain fibers was not an admirable simplification, but an unfortunate trivialization under the guise of simplification.

  Patrick David Wall

  Pain, Fiber, Injury

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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.

  Charles Babbage

  Artist, Profound, Age

  Charles Babbage, Peter Mark Roget (1989). “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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• 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.

  Amanda Ripley

  Smart, Car, People

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Happiness, the goal to which we all are striving is reached by endeavoring to make the lives of others happy, and if by renouncing the luxuries of life we can lighten the burdens of others.... surely the simplification of our wants is a thing greatly to be desired! And so, if instead of supposing that we must become hermits and dwellers in caves in order to practice simplicity, we set about simplifying our affairs, each according to his own convictions and opportunity, much good will result and the simple life will at once be established.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Happiness, Opportunity, Simple

  Mahatma Gandhi (2012). “The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas”, p.62, Vintage

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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.

  Clarence Manion

  Father, Men, Self

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• Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Simple, Complexity, Sophistication

  "The Age of Uncertainty". Documentary, 1977.

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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.

  Young-Ha Kim

  People, Meaning Of Life, Pruning

  Young-ha Kim (2007). “I Have the Right to Destroy Myself”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Government systems suffer from two weaknesses. They are complex. And they are slow. We need to change this. Our systems need to be made sharp, effective, fast and flexible. This requires simplification of processes and having trust in citizens. This needs a Policy Driven State.

  Narendra Modi

  Two, Government, Suffering

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• It's just that the longer I fish, the more I long for simplification and lightness.

  Tom Sutcliffe

  Fishing, Rivers, Lakes

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• Ulysses ... is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.

  E. M. Forster

  Dog, Character, Light

  'Aspects of the Novel' (1927) ch. 6 (on James Joyce's 'Ulysses')

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• If we were the problem, it would be very convenient, kick Greece out, everything's fine. But what happened to Spain? What about Portugal? What about Italy? What about the whole of the Eurozone? We need more cooperation and less simplification and prejudice about what has to happen.

  George Papandreou

  Spain, Prejudice, Would Be

  "CNN's Amanpour" with Christiane Amanpour, www.cnn.com. May 30, 2012.

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• I had a new idea in my head... this time it's just simply my bedroom, only here colour is to do everything, and, giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, to look at the picture ought to rest the brain or rather the imagination.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Sleep, Ideas, Giving

  Vincent van Gogh, Mark Roskill (1997). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh”, p.297, Simon and Schuster

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• The writer's first job is not to have opinions but to tell the truth... and refuse to be an accomplice of lies and misinformation. Literature is the house of nuance and contrariness against the voices of simplification.

  Susan Sontag

  Jobs, Lying, Voice

  Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.193, Macmillan

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• My tendency towards bareness and simplification has been practiced in three fields: modeling, colors, and the figuration of the personages.

  Joan Miro

  Color, Simplicity, Three

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• Elegance is reduction, simplification, condensation. It is spare, stark, sleek. Elegance is cultivated abstraction. The source of Greek and Roman classicism - clarity, order, proportion, balance - is in Egypt.

  Camille Paglia

  Egypt, Order, Greek

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• The extreme positions of the Crossfire Syndrome require extreme simplification - framing the debate in terms which ignore the real issues.

  Michael Crichton

  Real, Issues, Debate

  "Mediasaurus: the Decline of Conventional Media". Speech at the National Press Club, Washington D.C., April 07, 1993.

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• The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as the modern painter learns to draw, and then learns when utterly to disregard his accomplishment, when to subordinate it to a higher and truer effect.

  Willa Cather

  Writing, Accomplishment, Novelists

  Willa Cather (1988). “Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art”, p.40, U of Nebraska Press

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• If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Imagination, World

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.13, Penguin UK

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• That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Looks, Needs, Culture

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1968). “The New Industrial State”

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