“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

— Confucius

Attributed on the internet but not found in print prior to an attribution in Aero Digest, Vols. 58–59, 1949, p. 115 https://books.google.com/books?id=q2ofAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22Life+is+simple%22+but+we+insist+on+making+it+complicated&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Life+is+simple%22+
Misattributed, Not Chinese

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 16, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." by Confucius?

Confucius 269

Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher -551–-479 BC

Related quotes

“I want you to be everything that's you, deep at the center of your being.”
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.”

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.

“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
Attributed from posthumous publications

“College education tends to make simple things complicated and hard to understand. What we should do is to teach our children the most essential and simple principles of life and ways to handle problems.”

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).