Simplicity Quotes

“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”
― Albert Einstein

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

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

“Like all magnificent things, it's very simple.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

“And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered. But most of all, I learned that life is about sitting on benches next to ancient creeks with my hand on her knee and sometimes, on good days, for falling in love.”
― Nicholas Sparks

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
― Clare Boothe Luce

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
― E.F. Schumacher

“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.”
― Lao Tzu

“One should use common words to say uncommon things”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“The greatest ideas are the simplest.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“A child of five could understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.”
― Groucho Marx

“Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”
― Joanne Harris, Chocolat

“It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.”
― Bruce Lee

“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.”
― Langston Hughes

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy”
― Isaac Newton

“Living simply makes loving simple.”
― bell hooks

“Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.”
― Albert Einstein

“I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. ”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The greatest step towards a life of simplicity is to learn to let go.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Every solution to every problem is simple. It's the distance between the two where the mystery lies.”
― Derek Landy, Skulduggery Pleasant

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“It’s as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are.”
― David Levithan, Every Day

“Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”
― Isaac Newton

“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

“Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson