“The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“I once said that my aim is to leave out everything superfluous in order to allow the essential to come through.”
— Dieter Rams Primary source“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.”
— Henry David Thoreau Primary source“A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its area of applicability.”
— Albert Einstein Primary source“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”
— Henry David Thoreau Primary source“In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.”
— Henry David Thoreau Primary source“Good design is innovative. Good design must be useful. Good design is aesthetic design. Good design makes a product understandable. Good design is honest. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is long-lasting. Good design is consistent in every detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. And last but not least, good design is as little design as possible.”
— Dieter Rams Primary source“My aim was to design [door] handles that were as simple as possible. Our living environment today is complex and polymorphic enough. I have always striven to couteract this chaos.”
— Dieter Rams Primary source“Above all, I did not allow anything to be done which I did not myself understand. It worked!”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”
— Charlie Munger Primary source“Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.”
— Tony Hoare Secondary source“A crude measure of the simplicity of an engineering tool is the length of the manual required to give a full and complete account of how to use it and avoid misusing it.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“I was eventually persuaded of the need to design programming notations so as to maximize the number of errors which cannot be made, or if made, can be reliably detected at compile time.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its ends; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes. It is the most enduring quality and the most ascending quality.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“You can either buy clothes or buy pictures,” she said. “It’s that simple. No one who is not very rich can do both. Pay no attention to your clothes and no attention at all to the mode, and buy your clothes for comfort and durability, and you will have the clothes money to buy pictures.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“The history of the development of technique, like the history of geographical expansion, has failed to provide us with a criterion of the growth of civilizations, but it does reveal a principle by which technical progress is governed, which may be described as a law of progressive simplification. The ponderous and bulky steam-engine with its elaborate ‘permanent way’ is replaced by the neat and handy internal-combustion engine which can take to the roads with the speed of a railway train and almost all the freedom of action of a pedestrian. Telegraphy with wires is replaced by telegraphy without wires. The incredibly complicated scripts of the Sinic and Egyptiac societies are replaced by the neat and handy Latin Alphabet.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
— Albert Einstein Disputed“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
— Leonardo da Vinci DisputedDesign Software Design Minimalism Art Computer Programming