“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 Giaever5
Norwegian physicist 1929Related quotes
Zheng Yuanjie (1955) Chiese writer
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).
Charles Mingus (1922–1979) American jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader
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.”
David Levithan book Every Day
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.”
Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist
Box of delights http://www.newstatesman.com/node/147350, NewStatesman.com, 23 February 2004 <br class="br">Attributed from posthumous publications
Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist
Salman Rushdie — Talking with David Frost (1993)
Enrico Bombieri (1940) mathematician
Enrico Bombieri, cited in: Leonard F. Koziol (2014), The Myth of Executive Functioning. p. 1