“If I have learned anything as a scientist it is that one should not make things complicated when a simple explanation will do.”
Nobel lecture (1973)
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Ivar Giaever 5
Norwegian physicist 1929Related quotes
Zheng Yuanjie (2004) in: "Zheng Yuanjie's 19 years in fairy tales" on chinadaily.com.cn, May 10, 2004 ( online http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-05/10/content_329434.htm).

Statement in Mainliner (July 1977), as quoted in Creativity and the writing process (1982) by Olivia Bertagnolli, p. 182; also partly quoted in Survival Skills for Managers (1981) by Marlene Wilson, p. 19
Variant: Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.
As quoted in The Evaluation and Treatment of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (1999) by Nils R. Varney and Richard J. Roberts, p. 303
Context: My son's a painter. All through school his teachers tell him he's a genius. I tell him to paint me an apple that looks like and apple before he paints me one that doesn't. Go where you can go, but start from someplace recognizable. Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

“Simple and complicated, as most true things are.”
Variant: It’s as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are.
Source: Every Day
“A simple box is really a complicated thing.”
Box of delights http://www.newstatesman.com/node/147350, NewStatesman.com, 23 February 2004
Attributed from posthumous publications

Salman Rushdie — Talking with David Frost (1993)

Enrico Bombieri, cited in: Leonard F. Koziol (2014), The Myth of Executive Functioning. p. 1