A Quote by E. F. Schumacher

Any intelligent fool can invent further complications, but it takes a genius to retain, or recapture, simplicity.

E. F. Schumacher

Quote Topics

Any Complications Fool Further Genius Intelligent Invent Recapture Retain Simplicity Takes

Quote Author

E. F. Schumacher
English - Economist
August 16, 1911 - September 4, 1977

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

E. F. Schumacher

UNIX is simple and coherent, but it takes a genius (or at any rate, a programmer) to understand and appreciate its simplicity.

Dennis Ritchie

Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.

J. G. Ballard

Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.

David Ogilvy

I've learned any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.

Daniel J. Boorstin

I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.

Leo Burnett

Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.

Woody Guthrie

We can begin to let go of the complications that cause us to suffer by cultivating a simple state of awareness. In this process, tiny steps yield big results, in part because simplicity is nature's default position. Suffering and the complications that fuel it are unnatural; it wastes energy to maintain complexity.

Deepak Chopra

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

Albert Einstein

But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They have one idea in mind: to be intelligent, which is really stupid. And when intelligence takes itself for its own goal, it operates very strangely: the proof that it exists is not to be found in the ingenuity or simplicity of what it produces, but in how obscurely it is expressed.

Muriel Barbery

I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.

Henry James

Some fool aims to go to heaven; some clever knows that there isn't any; and some intelligent tries to create one with his own effort! Be intelligent!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Genius is its own reward; for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself. . . . Further, genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility.