The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction for blasé young gentlemen, but to convince... the masses. But the masses are slow moving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them.
It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas.
If there is any difficulty in what I write, it is because of the material I use. The thought is always simple.
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
Some people are aware of another sort of thinking which... leads to those simple ideas that are obvious only after they have been thought of... the term 'lateral thinking' has been coined to describe this orther sort of thinking; 'vertical thinking' is used to denote the conventional logical process.
Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
I don't believe in philosophies. I believe in fundamentals.
If something can't be explained on the back of an envelope, it's rubbish.
I am completely attracted to the idea of simplicity, or at least removing things that seem unnecessary when trying to get an idea out there.
All of my work stems from the simplest of ideas that go back to the earliest civilizations: making clothing from one piece of cloth. It is my touchstone.
One of the purest souls ever to live on this fallen planet was Nicholas Herman, known as Brother Lawrence. He wrote very little, but what he wrote has seemed to several generations of Christians to be so rare and so beautiful as to deserve a place near the top among the world's great books of devotion. The writings of Brother Lawrence are the ultimate in simplicity; ideas woven like costly threads to make a pattern of great beauty.
If we trace the progress of our minds, and with attention observe how it repeats, adds together, and unites its simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, it will lead us farther than at first, perhaps, we should have imagined.
The television industry doesn't like to see the compexity of the world. It prefers simple reporting, with simple ideas: this is white, that's black; this is good, that's bad.
It's a fantastic thing, a very simple idea. Irrespective of your politics, of your culture, of your race, of your whatever, hierdie ding doen ons saam...Here is one thing that can unite us irrespective of all of the things that are trying to tear us apart.
Finally there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms or postulates, or in a word primary principles, which cannot be proved and have no need of proof.
The best ideas and the most useful and ground-breaking are often, though not always, in one sense, very simple ideas.
The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.
All it takes is one idea to solve an impossible problem.
I can't solve a puzzle for the life of me - my brain doesn't work that way. But I can take a very simple idea and extrapolate from it and spend time with it and pull things out of it.
It is no easy matter to say commonplace things in an original way.
Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds. Remy de Gourmont An idea is salvation by imagination
One of the revelations in that book [Lincoln in the Bardo] for me was this idea about citizenship. Even that word - citizenship - for someone my age, it makes me cringe. But, to me, the political space we're in now argues for a reboot of fairly simple ideas and the examination of the way that Americans have not been living into them.
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
Sometimes a problem will seem completely insurmountable. Then someone comes up with a simple new idea, or just a rearrangement of old ideas, that completely eliminates it.
The way to do good basic design isn't actually to be really smart about it, but to try to have a few basic concepts.
