Edward Gorey Quotes

I like cutting through complexity and trying to get to the kernel of an idea.

The more one knows, the more one simplifies.

Unexplained, obscure matters are regarded as more important than explained, clear ones.

To ask for an explanation is to explain the obscure by the more obscure.

Those things which I am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper place.

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler.

Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.

I'm always telling my students that if they can't explain what they are doing, to their grandmothers, then they probably don't understand it themselves.

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

I cannot be understood in three minutes.

There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

Many things complicated by nature are restored by reason.

Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.

If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it.

The fact that something is actually understandable and relatable doesn't mean that it's unsophisticated or banal. It just means that it's crystal-clear. And if you can't explain it, that doesn't necessarily mean it's so brilliant that ordinary mortals can't fathom it. It might just mean that it makes no sense.

I believe that every one of us has a gift. And I believe that mine is the ability to take the complex and make it simple.

I love the challenge of taking these really complicated subjects and trying to humanise them.

Facts are often complicated.

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.

You can't make the incomprehensible comprehensible without losing it completely

When you have that last piece of the jigsaw, everything will, I hope, be clear..." -Albus Dumbledore

If something can't be explained on the back of an envelope, it's rubbish.

An expert is someone who takes something you already know and makes it sound confusing.