A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
No published occurrence of such an attribution has yet been located prior to one in Wisdom Through the Ages : Book Two (2003) by Helen Granat, p. 225; this was used as an early slogan at Apple Computer in 1984, but the earliest occurence yet located is in The Recognitions (1955) by William Gaddis, p. 457:
Stop being so God Damn humble … You know God damn well that … that humility is defiance … simplicity today is sophisticated … simplicity is the ultimate sophistication today.
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Leonardo Da Vinci 363
Italian Renaissance polymath 1452–1519Related quotes
Mario Bunge, The myth of simplicity, 1963, p, 86-87; As cited in: Colin E. Gunton (1993), The One, the Three and the Many, p. 44
1960s-1990s
As quoted in 777 Mathematical Conversation Starters http://books.google.co.in/books?id=JNbKURWmODkC&pg=PA172 (2002) by John de Pillis, p. 172
“What is simplicity? Simplicity is the shortest path to a solution.”
A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work
“… the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.”
Austin (1956) " A Plea for Excuses http://www.ditext.com/austin/plea.html", in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1956-7.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 545.