“To synthesize is not necessarily to simplify in the sense of suppressing certain parts of the object: it is to simplify in the sense of rendering intelligible. It is, in short, to put in hierarchic order: to set each picture to a single rhythm, to a dominant; it is sacrifice, to subordinate — to generalize.”

Source: Living Systems: Basic Concepts (1969), p. 51

Variant translation: One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. With this negative motive goes a positive one. Man seeks to form for himself, in whatever manner is suitable for him, a simplified and lucid image of the world, and so to overcome the world of experience by striving to replace it to some extent by this image. This is what the painter does, and the poet, the speculative philosopher, the natural scientist, each in his own way. Into this image and its formation, he places the center of gravity of his emotional life, in order to attain the peace and serenity that he cannot find within the narrow confines of swirling personal experience.
As quoted in The Professor, the Institute, and DNA (1976) by Rene Dubos; also in The Great Influenza (2004) by John M. Barry
1910s, Principles of Research (1918)
Context: Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 198

Quoted in Patrick Caughill, "Another Expert Joins Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk in Warning About the Dangers of AI" https://futurism.com/2-expert-thinks-ai-will-undoubtably-wipe-out-humanity/, February 2017

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous)

Michael Halliday (1985) cited in: Xueyan Yang (2010) Modelling Text As Process. p. 20.
1970s and later

Source: General System Theory (1968), 4. Advances in General Systems Theory, p. 83

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Pin-hole as a substitute for the lens, p. 60

Source: Cognitive Psychology, 1967, p. 103; As cited in: A.H.C. Van der Heijden (1996)