Quotes about simple
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“Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

“Existence was really very simple when you did what you were told.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

“How difficult it is to be simple.”

Irving Stone book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

“I'm in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn't that the simple magic phrase?”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are -- a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.”

Ha-Joon Chang book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Source: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Way

“Evil's just destructive? Then storms are evil, if it's that simple. And we have fire, and there there's hail. Underwriters lump it all under 'Acts of God.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

God, Evil

“Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.”

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936) Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist

Memory, Past

“I know this simple fact to be true, for I myself have abandoned people who did not want me to go, and I myself have been abandoned by those whom I begged to stay.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

People

“Life was simple when you were a Shield Bug.”

Angie Sage book Magyk

Source: Magyk

Life

“I now find the most marvelous things in the everyday, the ordinary, the common, the simple and tangible.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

Love, Truth, World, Forgiveness

“because it seemed too simple to accept that life was an act of faith.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Life, Faith

“Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."

"Ah, well, I'm not sure I believe that.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

“Ah, art! Ah, life! The pendulum swinging back and forth, from complex to simple, again to complex. From romantic to realistic, back to romantic.”

Ray Bradbury book The October Country

Source: The October Country

Life, Art

“She will not be simple and sweet.
She will not be what people tell her she should be.”

E. Lockhart book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Source: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

People

“Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”

Leo Tolstoy The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Ch. II
Source: The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

Life

“My prayer is simple my dear one, my dear one. May you never need understand. My prayer is for peacetime, my child, my child. Live it well and this life can be grand.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Hawksong

Source: Hawksong

Life, Understanding

“To be prosperous and happy in life, Henry, it is simple. Pick one woman, pick it well, and surrender.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Source: The Signature of All Things

Life, Happiness

“If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.”

Richard Yates (1926–1992) Novelist, short story writer

“Facts are simple and facts are straight.
Facts are lazy and facts are late.
Facts all come with points of view.
Facts don't do what I want them to.
Facts just twist the truth around.
Facts are living turned inside out.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

Truth

“It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Personality

“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

Life

“Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Youth, Thinking

“the description of lust was simple: two people learn they're compatible, attraction grows, and the ancient instinct to preserve the species kicks in.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

People, Learning

“There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind…”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“To be simple is no small matter.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Source: Selected Letters

“As the man said, for every complex problem there’s a simple solution, and it’s wrong.”

Umberto Eco book Foucault's Pendulum

Source: Foucault's Pendulum

Problem

“If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't.”

Ian Stewart (1945) British mathematician and science fiction author

Source: The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World

Understanding

“The question was which spell did I make? Which did I have time to make?
The answer was eerily simple.
I had time to make all of them.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Question, Time

“Marriage is not a simple love affair, it’s an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

Love, Marriage

“I understand once again that the greatness of God always reveals itself in the simple things.”

Paulo Coelho book Like the Flowing River

Source: Like the Flowing River

God, Understanding

“She'd rather hoped for something simple, like a lined piece of notebook paper with MY EVIL PLAN written across the top, but no luck.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Hope, Evil

“A man's plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand… well, God put a lot of thought in making you.”

Khaled Hosseini (1965) novelist

God

“I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American children's writer, diarist, and journalist

"A Bouquet of Wild Flowers", article published in the Missouri Ruralist (20 July 1917)

Life, Learning, Mother's Day

“Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Life, Game

“Nothing more exhilarating… than saving yourself by the simple act of waking.”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“You try to keep life simple but it never works, and in the end all you have left is yourself.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

Source: A is for Alibi

Life

“He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Education

“It was hidden inside another book. One Valentine was unlikely to ever open." Magnus smiled crookedly. "Simple Recipes for Housewives. No one can say your mother didn't have a sense of humor.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Books, Smile, Sense

“It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

People, Truth, Failure

“People surprise you, Frank, with just how fuckin stupid they are. I mean, do you actually realize how much adult conversation is spent on this fuckin business? Facts treated like they were opinions just for the simple purpose of talking about it longer? Some people might think that's interesting, bub, but I'll tell you. It's romanticizing a goddamn rock by calling it a mountain range to me. People waste a helluva lot of time they could be putting to useful purposes. This is a game. See it and forget about it.”

Richard Ford The Sportswriter

Source: The Sportswriter (1986), p. 104

People, Stupidity, Mountain, Game

“Surfing?” he asked. She laughed, and the sound sent a shock wave through the water. The wailing faded to background noise. Annabeth wondered if anyone had ever laughed in Tartarus before—just a pure, simple laugh of pleasure. She doubted it.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Pleasure, Water

“The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Knowledge, Teachers

“He loved her. It was as simple and as complicated as that.”

Pamela Aidan book These Three Remain

Source: These Three Remain

Love

“The end cannot justify the means for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

Ends and Means (1937)

Nature

“It is always so simple, and so complicating, to accept an apology.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

“The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

Truth, Learning, Forgetting

“A pretentious, showy life is an empty life; a plain and simple life is a full life.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life

“Just tell me you don't love me, and I'll let the matter drop."
"What?"
"What I said. Just say, 'Rai, I don't love you and I never will'. It's that simple."
"Raisa, this is getting us nowhere."
"Say it!”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Exiled Queen

Love

“It was as simple as that - they met. As simple as only beautiful things can be beautiful, as only life-changing things, turning-point things, can be simple.

("For The Rest Of Her Life")”

Cornell Woolrich (1903–1968) American author and screenwriter

Source: Angels of Darkness

Life, Beauty, Change

“Dogs are here to remind us life really is a simple thing. You eat, sleep, take walks, and pee when you must. That's about all there is. They are quick to forgive trespasses and assume strangers will be kind.”

Jonathan Carroll book The Marriage of Sticks

Source: The Marriage of Sticks

Life, Dogs, Forgiveness, Sleep

“We had pathetically simple dreams:
to do meaningful work that we could be proud of, to be together, and to be happy.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Happiness, Dreams

“In those three years, (from fourteen to seventeen years old)… I came to understand the meaning of a drawing from the life, the synthesis of my art, and the rhythm of animais. I remember that a companion of those days,' of whom I hâve since lost sight, made me see, in a couple of hours, on a very true and simple principle, an observation of the necessary equilibria of movement not taught in the schools, the secret of the plans of a figure. That lesson has influenced my whole life. As for the ornament-maker, in whose workshop I earned a scanty wage, I long deplored being constrained to do so, but I hâve since thought with affection of it, understanding that there are as many sources of beauty in ornament as in the face.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 2-3

Life, Secret, School, Beauty

“…he remembered being very happy. But things change. People change. Change was one of the inevitable laws of nature, exacting its toll on people's lives. Mistakes were made, regrets form, and all the was left were repercussions that made something as simple as rising from the bed seem almost laborious.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Travis Parker, Proloque, p. 3
2000s, The Choice (2007)

Happiness, People, Law, Nature

“The transition to a GUI, and eventually to one close to a Macintosh, was a far greater step than refinements since. Some of these are just simple alternatives, which can't be over-valued due to increasing the complexity of having less consistency in how things are done. Others of these are more akin to rearranging the furniture. The great change was in becoming a modern GUI machine. In that sense, virtually every machine is a 'Macintosh' now.”

Steve Wozniak (1950) American inventor, computer engineer and programmer

Explaining his comment that now "Every PC is a Macintosh", "Letters-General Questions Answered" p. 105 http://www.woz.org/letters/general/105.html Woz.org files

Guy, Sense, Change

“It was long ago in my life as a simple reporter that I decided that facts must never get in the way of truth.”

James Cameron (journalist) (1911–1985) British journalist

The Encarta Book of Quotations (2000), p. 173 http://books.google.com/books?id=Af84fBmzmVYC&q=%22It+was+long+ago+in+my+life+as+a+simple+reporter+that+I+decided+that+facts+must+never+get+in+the+way+of+truth%22&pg=PA173#v=onepage Attributed

Life, Truth, Way

“In many cases a dull proof can be supplemented by a geometric analogue so simple and beautiful that the truth of a theorem is almost seen at a glance.”

Martin Gardner (1914–2010) recreational mathematician and philosopher

"Mathematical Games", in Scientific American (October 1973); also quoted in Roger B. Nelson, Proofs Without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking (1993), "Introduction", p. v

Truth, Beauty

“A referendum is little more than a "rumour of choice." The idea behind the mechanism, ever since its first modern manifestations two centuries ago under Napoleon, has been to replace democracy with the sensation of democracy. That is: to replace the slow, complex, eternally unclear continuity of democracy, and all the awkwardness of citizen participation, with something clear and fast which allows those in power to impose their agenda. Through an apparently simple question with a one-syllable answer, those who ask can get a blank cheque from the citizenry; that is, if they choose their moment well and come up with a winning question.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)

Democracy, Idea, Question

“I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Salman Rushdie — Talking with David Frost (1993)

People, World, Thinking, Envy

“The rest of our weekend—sleeping arrangements, hand-done work, hand-prepared food—was simple enough to please Thoreau, who I am convinced was a nice fellow who confused rustic vacations with life.”

Alexei Panshin book Rite of Passage

Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 11 (p. 157).

Life, Food, Sleep

“It's really quite simple. Mr. Isinglass robbed my father, destroyed my mother, exiled my brothers, and ruined me. If I catch him asleep I'll kill him. I do hope you like this pudding. I had to ride quite a way to find the plums.”

Larry McMurtry (1936) American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter

Anything For Billy (1988).

Hope, Way

“Everything passes.–
Only robust art is eternal.
The bust outlives the city.
And the simple coin
Unearthed by a peasant
Reveals the image of an emperor.”

Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) French writer

Tout passe.
L'art robuste
Seul a l'éternité,
Le buste
Survit à la cité.
Et la médaille austère
Que trouve un laboureur
Sous terre
Révèle un empereur.
All passes, art alone
Enduring stays to us;
The bust outlasts the throne, —
The coin, Tiberius.
"L'Art", line 41, in Émaux et Camées (1852; Genève: Librairie Droz, 1947) pp. 131-2; Dean de la Motte and Jeannene M. Przyblyski (eds.) Making the News (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) p. 144; Henry Austin Dobson "Ars Victrix", line 29, in The Complete Poetical Works of Austin Dobson (Whitefish, Montana: Kessenger, 2005) p. 142.

Art

“Unless we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His power, Christ is nothing to us.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 608.

Wedding, Christ

“… To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget. …”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From the book "The cost of living".
Speeches

Love, Life, Beauty, Understanding

“You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right—at least if you have any experience—because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in. …The inexperienced, the crackpots, and people like that, make guesses that are simple, but you can immediately see that they are wrong, so that does not count. Others, the inexperienced students, make guesses that are very complicated, and it sort of looks as if it is all right, but I know it is not true because the truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

as quoted by K.C. Cole, Sympathetic Vibrations: Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life (1985)

People, Truth, Beauty

“Deep down, everything boils down ("au fond tout se ramène", Fr.) to the following simple question; Do we really want justice and the realization in this world of higher principles, or else do we want to serve selfish, short-sighted (à courte vue", Fr.) interests, which, when all is said and done, are also prejudicial (or detrimental, or harmful) to those very same that pursue them?”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 55.

World, Justice, Question, Selfishness

“If there’s one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what’s best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness — don’t waste the opportunity!”

Andrew Mason (1981) businessman

Groupon CEO: “I Was Fired Today.” http://allthingsd.com/20130228/groupon-dumps-andrew-mason-as-ceo (February 28, 2013)

Wisdom, Happiness, Courage, Change

“What eie doth not pitty to see the great weaknes and decay of our ancient and common mother the earth, which now is grown so aged and stricken in yeares, and so wounded at the hart with the ploughman's goad, that she beginneth to faint under the husbandman's hand, and groaneth for the decay of her natural balsam. For whose good health and recovery, and for the better comfort of sundry simple and needy farmers of this land, I have partly undertaken these strange labours, altogether abhorring from my profession, that they might both know and practise some farther secrets in their husbandry, for the better manuring of their leane and barren groundes with some new sorts of marie not yet knowne, or not sufficiently regarded by the best experienced men of our daies.”

Hugh Plat (1552–1608) writer

Cited in: Robert Kemp Philp. The History of Progress in Great Britain http://books.google.com/books?id=s1oBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA72, Vol. 1 (1859). p. 72 Text is about the "motive of the author for thus undertaking books of instruction upon husbandry." The Jewell House of Art and Nature, 1594

Men, Health, Secret, Age

“What this book is about is a kind of analysis that is characteristic of a large part of the social sciences, especially the more theoretical part. That kind of analysis explores the relation between the behavior of individuals who compromise some social aggregate, and the characteristics of the aggregate.These situations, in which people's behavior or people's choices depend on the behavior or choices of other people, are the ones that usually don't permit any simple summation or extrapolation of the aggregates. To make that connection we usually have to look at the system of interaction between individuals and their environment, that is, between individuals and other individuals or between individuals and the collectivity.”

Thomas C. Schelling (1921–2016) American economist

Micromotives and Microbehavior (1978).

People, Books, Behavior, Science

“Franklin is a good type of our American manhood. Although not the wealthiest or the most powerful, he is undoubtedly, in the versatility of his genius and achievements, the greatest of our self-made men. The simple yet graphic story in the Autobiography of his steady rise from humble boyhood in a tallow-chandler shop, by industry, economy, and perseverance in self-improvement, to eminence, is the most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men. It is in itself a wonderful illustration of the results possible to be attained in a land of unequaled opportunity by following Franklin's maxims.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Written by Frank Woodworth Pine in his introduction to the 1916 publication of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm. Pine, F.W. (editor). Henry Holt and Company via Gutenberg Press. (1916). Introduction. The Autobiography (1818), The Autobiography (1916)

Men, History, Perseverance

“Inflation is a simple idea: imagine that the universe begins in a tiny patch of space dominated by the potential energy of some scalar field, a kind of super-dense dark energy. This causes that patch to expand at a terrifically accelerated rate, smoothing out the density and diluting away any unwanted relics. Eventually the scalar field decays into ordinary matter and radiation, reheating the universe into a conventional Big Bang state, after which things proceed as normal.”

Sean Carroll (1966) American theoretical cosmologist

[The Eternally Existing, Self-reproducing, Frequently Puzzling Inflationary Universe, Preposterous Universe blog, 21 October 2011, http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/10/21/the-eternally-existing-self-reproducing-frequently-puzzling-inflationary-universe/]

Imagination, Idea, Universe

“During the last few years it has become apparent that the concept of "machine" must be very greatly extended if it is to include the most modern developments. Especially is this true if we are studying the brain and attempting to identify the type of mechanism that is responsible for the brain’s outstanding powers of thought and action. It has become apparent that when we used to doubt whether the brain could be a machine, our doubts were due chieﬂy to the fact that by ‘‘machine’’ we understood some mechanism of very simple type. Familiar with the bicycle and the typewriter, we were in great danger of taking them as the type of all machines. The last decade, however, has corrected this error. It has taught us how restricted our outlook used to be; for it developed mechanisms that far transcended the utmost that had been thought possible, and taught us that ‘‘mechanism’’ was still far from exhausted in its possibilities. Today we know only that the possibilities extend beyond our farthest vision.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

W. Ross Ashby (1951), "Statistical Machinery". In: Thales Vol 7. p.1 as cited in: Peter M. Asaro (2008) " From Mechanisms of Adaptation to Intelligence Ampliﬁers: The Philosophy of W. Ross Ashby http://cybersophe.org/writing/Asaro%20Ashby.pdf"

Error, Study

“We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor,…have no health care—that's the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south…when [Mexico's] jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.”

Ross Perot (1930–2019) American businessman

1992 Presidential Debate, regarding the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Transcript http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/16/us/the-1992-campaign-transcript-of-2d-tv-debate-between-bush-clinton-and-perot.html

Money, Health, Cars, Country

“Darwin's theory of evolution was simple, beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring. But because it contradicts the allegorical babblings of a bunch of made-up old books, it's been under attack since day one. That's just tough luck for Darwin. If the Bible had contained a passage that claimed gravity is caused by God pulling objects toward the ground with magic invisible threads, we'd still be debating Newton with idiots too.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian 2 August 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/aug/02/television.television Guardian columns

God, Books, Beauty

“This book is about a simple, benign experiment, or perhaps we should call it an inquiry, to learn what are the essential ingredients in interspecies friendships and even love. The basic idea was to raise together a kitten, a puppy, a bunny, a chick, and a baby rat in close circumstances to see if they would all get along and even become good friends.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Introduction
Raising the Peaceable Kingdom (2005)

Love, Friendship, Books, Idea

“We have already various treatises on Mechanics, but the plan of this one is entirely new. I intend to reduce the theory of this Science, and the art of solving problems relating to it, to general formulae, the simple development of which provides all the equations necessary for the solution of each problem. I hope that the manner in which I have tried to attain this object will leave nothing to be desired. No diagrams will be found in this work. The methods that I explain require neither geometrical, nor mechanical, constructions or reasoning, but only algebraical operations in accordance with regular and uniform procedure. Those who love Analysis will see with pleasure that Mechanics has become a branch of it, and will be grateful to me for having thus extended its domain.”

Joseph Louis Lagrange book Mécanique analytique

Mécanique analytique (1788) as quoted by E. W. Hobson, Mathematics, from the points of view of the Mathematician and of the Physicist (1912) an address delivered to the Mathematical and Physical Society of University College London, p.13. https://books.google.com/books?id=H7Y_AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA13

Love, Pleasure, Hope, Art

“On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”
At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus, qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti, quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint, obcaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa, qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. nam libero tempore, cum soluta nobis est eligendi optio, cumque nihil impedit, quo minus id, quod maxime placeat, facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet, ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (The Ends of Good and Evil), Book I, section 33; Translation by H. Rackham (1914)

Men, Pain, Pleasure, Business

“In end, this free goodwill and simple meaning of the Canarians wrought such tenderness in my father's heart that he could not abstain from shedding tears, and wept most profusely; then, by choice words very congruously adapted, strove in what he could to diminish the estimation of the good offices which he had done them, saying, that any courtesy he had conferred upon them was not worth a rush, and what favour soever he had showed them he was bound to do it.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 50 : Gargantua's speech to the vanquished -->

Tear, Heart

“No objection can be made to these voluntary associations upon the ground that they would lack that knowledge of justice, as a science, which would be necessary to enable them to maintain justice, and themselves avoid doing injustice. Honesty, justice, natural law, is usually a very plain and simple matter, easily understood by common minds. Those who desire to know what it is, in any particular case, seldom have to go far to find it.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section IV, p. 8
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter I. The Science of Justice.

Justice, Law, Nature, Knowledge

“The American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.”

James Truslow Adams (1878–1949) American writer and historian

The Epic of America (2nd ed., Greenwood Press, 1931), p. 405

Dreams, Past

“We may also fitly remember that Satan has his miracles, which, though they are deceitful tricks rather than true powers, are such a sort as to mislead the simple-minded and untutored [Thes, 2:9-10] … Idolatry has been nourished by wonderful miracles, yet these are not sufficient to sanction the superstition either of magicians or of idolators.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Prefatory Address, McNeill (ed.), Institutes, p. 17; as quoted in ibid, p.222

“The nature of the mind is to interpret non-essentials essential. The mind creates artificial needs, believing it cannot live without them. In this way we carry a great burden of attachments throughout our life. Attachment is itself a great burden on our minds. We may never understand the extent of the burden till we’re free of it. But if we find joy within, we can live a simple life, free of endless complications.”

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

?
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life, Way, Understanding, Nature

“Business? Why, it's very simple: business is other people's money.”

Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895) French writer and dramatist, son of the homonym writer and dramatist

Les affaires, c'est bien simple, c'est l'argent des autres.
La Question d'argent (1857), Act II, sc. vii; translation from Frederick Brown Theater and Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1980) p. 5.

Money, People, Business

“Quite apart from the prestige of technology, people do, after all, prefer a simple idea to a complex one.”

Bernard Crick (1929–2008) British political theorist and democratic socialist

Source: In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981, Chapter 5, A Defence Of Politics Against Technology, p. 106.

People, Idea

“Of course, the test difficulty depends on what you're doing, and on how you're doing it. I'm constantly asking "How much would I have to screw this up to write an incorrect function that passes these simple tests?" Occasionally the answer is "Not much," so I'll throw the code away and start over. It was probably perfect code, but that's not good enough.”

Daniel J. Bernstein (1971) American mathematician, cryptologist and programmer

http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?selm=slrncvp1eg.170p.usenet@stoneport.math.uic.edu
On testing

Dependency, Perfection

“What surprised me, which Google was part of, is that superficial search techniques over large bodies of stuff could get you what you wanted. I grew up in the AI tradition, where you have a complete conceptual model, and the information retrieval tradition, where you have complex vectors of key terms and Boolean queries. The idea that you can index billions of pages and look for a word and get what you want is quite a trick. To put it in more abstract terms, it's the power of using simple techniques over very large numbers versus doing carefully constructed systematic analysis.”

Terry Winograd (1946) American computer scientist

"Talking with Terry Winograd" http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/t_winograd_1.html, Ubiquity 3 (23), 29 July 2002.

Search, Idea, Parting

“Like Fichte, Brentano had one simple and powerful insight. He declared: there is a basic difference between a mental and physical act. if I slip on the snow and fall flat on my back, that is an unintentional physical act. But there is no such thing as an unintentional mental act. When I think, I have to think about something; I have to focus my mind on it. You could compare all mental acts (thinking, willing, loving, trying to remember something) to a searchlight beam stabbing into the darkness. There is an element of will, of 'intentionality,' in all mental activity. So it is quite inaccurate to compare mental activity to chemistry, or to a kind of drifting, like leaves on a stream. It flows purposefully or not at all.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision (1985), p. 35

Love, Thinking

“I have a very simple question to people … who seem to suffer from excessive narcissism: please name three other persons who are smarter and more capable than you, in the field you work in. (In most cases they are utterly unable to answer that question honestly.)”

Ingo Molnar Linux kernel programmer

A comment http://lwn.net/Articles/447204/ at LWN.net in 2011.

People, Question, Suffering, Personality

“This is especially important when addressing less statistically savvy audiences. Such audiences could perhaps be encouraged to think of two normal distributions, one representing males and the other females. Instead of imagining that natural selection creates two distinct psychological types — a male type and a female type, described by the mean values for each group — they could be encouraged to imagine that natural selection pushes the male and female distributions closer together or further apart. This simple expedient may help people to visualize the effects of natural selection on average sex differences without at the same time losing sight of the variation within each sex.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2013), p. 268

People, Sex, Imagination, Nature

“The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Introduction to Pascal’s Pensées

Faith, Thinking

“We have survived bitter divisions in our society. Reconciliation requires us to put aside our differences and forgive the injuries done to us just as justice is essential to that equation. Those who have done wrong and broken the law must be punished. There can be no setting to rights or settling of accounts without that element. Until that is done there will be no finality to our collective nightmare. Until we all accept that simple fact the sense of hurt and betrayal continue.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Our Country at the Crossroads - 2001 Parkinson Memorial Lecture Series, 15 August 2001 http://www.usp.ac.fj/journ/docs/news/wansolnews/wansol1508013.html.

Justice, Law, Forgiveness, Sense