Quotes About Simplicity

You don't need a great green thumb in order to make something look nice. A lot of times, it's just about cleaning up the weeds and trimming back the shrubs.

There is nothing so beautiful as the free forest. To catch a fish when you are hungry, cut the boughs of a tree, make a fire to roast it, and eat it in the open air, is the greatest of all luxuries. I would not stay a week pent up in cities if it were not for my passion for art.

I used to get my money at the end of the week, buy my mum something, or buy a record, and that was it.

I wash my hair once or twice a week to keep the natural oils.

I survived because I never took on big responsibilities in my private life. In the early days, I lived on two or three pounds a week and learned to cook - and I'm a good cook - because I had to. Even when I went on holiday, I stayed in other people's houses.

Before Mint.com, I was a long-time user of 'Microsoft Money' and Intuit's 'Quicken.' Both were powerful tools, loaded with features and functionality around taxes, investment, budgeting - too feature-laden, in fact. They took hours to set up, forever to learn, and an hour a week to maintain.

I wanted a personal-finance tool for people who didn't want to be accountants: something you could set up in ten minutes and spend less than five minutes a week on. Mint is now that tool.

I prefer surveying for a week to spending a week in fashionable society even of the best class.

I wash my hair once a week. You can do that. I swear. My sister-in-law and all of my friends were like, 'I can't do that. It sounds gross.' Once you train your hair, it will do whatever you want it to do. And on day seven when it's too oily, you just put it in a ponytail.

We usually think of improving our life by adding stuff - like more things, more success, more friends. I think the starting place should be removing stuff - try a month without Instagram; try a week without looking at fashion pictures. See how that affects your life, your friendships, and your ability to focus on other things.

We buy too much stuff we just don't need. We're trying to look cute for next weekend when we ought to be thinking about the next decade.

I'm kind of a dork. I don't have much game. I'm not particularly comfortable in bars or clubs. I much prefer being home playing Scrabble, having dinner with a couple friends, going to see a movie, or losing a whole weekend to Season 14 of Law and Order or The Simpsons.

I long for the days when grosses were not even known. There was no weekend competition.

I've given up email. Well, almost. At the weekend I set up one of those auto-reply messages, informing my correspondents that I would no longer be checking my emails, and that instead they might like to call or write, as we used to in the olden days.

I didn't understand the Weber bar and how gravitational waves interacted with it. I sat and thought about it over a weekend, trying to prepare for the lecture for the following Monday. I asked myself how would I do it. The simplest way... was a thought experiment.

I try to teach people to make fewer mistakes. But in designing economic policies, we need to take full account of the fact that people are busy, they're absent minded, they're lazy, and that we should try to make things as easy for them as possible.

My policy is to do the least amount to get by.

I typically don't wear nail polish, as I like a natural look.

I'm an unambitious politician.

It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.

Obama does look good, but he could look better. The most important thing for politicians is to keep their clothes really simple and make sure their clothing actually fits.

The best politics is no politics.

I like being a big fish in a small pond. I'm not interested in a huge audience because it brings headaches.

My entire life, I just wanted a pony, and I couldn't care less about a pair of shoes.