Quotes About Simplicity

Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't.

I realize I've had this spirit-animal relationship with sweatpants. In a past life, I probably was a pair of sweatpants. There's something beautifully simple but highly underestimated about them.

I like the songs to appear very simple and to flow by without any kind of hiccup, but there has to be this impression of other currents underneath. Like if the songs aren't, on some level, multidimensional, we lose interest in them.

The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song.

I love dresses that just skim the body, that suggest what's underneath rather than display it.

What one fool can understand, another can.

Complex things, if you don't understand them, it seems complicated. If you understand them, and we know how to handle it, it became simple.

Today, I'd like to talk to Bob Marley. I'd just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don't know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from 'Redemption Song' to 'Is This Love?' and 'I Shot the Sheriff.'

I think country music is popular - has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it's simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

I think purpose is the most important thing because once you understand that, everything else becomes easy.

Those who appreciate the ways of simple tribes, where every activity is direct and immediately understandable, are able to live among them.

I don't like lyrics to be overbearing. I like them to say something. But I'm not trying to change the world overnight. Something simple and understandable that people can relate their own everyday experiences to.

The New Testament is of full authority and open to the understanding of simple men as to the points most needful to salvation.

How thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which, at the same time, assist in understanding earlier theories and in casting aside some more complicated developments.

Understanding reduces the greatest to simplicity, and lack of its causes the least to take on the magnitude.

The duty of a historian is simply to understand and then convey that understanding, no more than that.

Arriving at a simple piece of music is a very difficult balance because, in being simple, you could easily be banal, so maybe it's more difficult to write a simple piece of music than a 12-tone piece where no one understands exactly what it is about.

At the end of the day, you want a straightforward, simple system which everyone understands. If you can get clarity and simplicity in any process, it's better for everybody.

The world doesn't see a lot of gray. The world sees black and white, and then it understands.

Brown is definitely my colour. I like it's understated drabness.

I don't believe in being loud. I find that stupid. Understated things work much better.

I wear what I feel most comfortable in. I love black and grey. I like colour as long as it's understated.

I've always gone for the more understated look.

However old-fashioned and right-wing this may sound, the American genius for language lies in understatement, in saying things simply, pointedly and quickly, and in making new and clean and swift what otherwise might be ponderous, round and slow.