R. D. Laing Quotes

If you have to go back and spell-check the text you're about to send, you're saying too much.

They write them long because they can't write them short.

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

I say what I need to, not a whole lot more.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

Advertising is the art of the tiny. You have to tell a complete a story and deliver a complete message in a very encapsulated form. It disciplines you to cut away extraneous information.

I labor to be brief, and manage to be obscure.

Never say more than is necessary.

The essence of style is a simple way of saying something complex.

I am trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one period.

I think it's OK that everyone's not real heavy and wordy and heady.

If you can't summarize an issue on one page, you don't understand the issue well enough.

Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.

We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused -- in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible.

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.

Anything that can be put in a nut shell should remain there.

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated.

Say what you have to say and the first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending - sit down.

If we are understood, more words are unnecessary; if we are not likely to be understood, they are useless.

Whatever you teach, be brief; what is quickly said, the mind readily receives and faithfully retains, everything superfluous runs over as from a full vessel.

The key thing was to learn the value of economy with words and to never insult the viewer by telling them what they can already see.

To say more while saying less is the secret of being simple.

If You can't tell it to me in one sentence, they can't put it in TV Guide.

My natural tendency is to complicate everything--and then to spray words and ideas onto everything afterwards. I've had to develop the habit of keeping things simple.