A Quote by Lin Yutang
The age calls for simple statements and restatements of simple truths. The prophets of doom are involved, those who would bring light must be clear.
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The old saying of the two kinds of truth. To the one kind belongs statements so simple and clear that the opposite assertion obviously could not be defended. The other kind, the so-called 'deep truths', are statements in which the opposite also contains deep truth.
We meet on the common ground of an uncommon age and share out our gifts of dark and light, good and bad, simple joy and not so simple sorrow.
You can't believe how hard it is for people to be simple, how much they fear being simple. They worry that if they're simple, people will think they're simpleminded. In reality, of course, it's just the reverse. Clear, tough-minded people are the most simple.
There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible, and those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary its reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths until we reach those which are primitive.
The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely wise in our replies.
Key statements made by latter-day prophets are not trite clichés. They are vital counsel to us from the Lord through his prophets. We should ponder and act upon such statements.
Something good happened to my writing when I stopped being afraid to do something simple, for the fear that people might think I couldn't do something more complex. Don't be confused by the word simple. Simple is not easy, it is clear voiced, and fearlessly elegant.
Theorems often tell us complex truths about the simple things, but only rarely tell us simple truths about the complex ones. To believe otherwise is wishful thinking or "mathematics envy."
It is easy to be accurate if you have the freedom to be complicated, and it is very easy to be simple if you have the freedom to shade the truth. What's hard is to be simple and very accurate, and that takes work to figure out what are the simple truths that are going to sustain your case.
The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.
There are several kinds of truths, and it is customary to place in the first order mathematical truths, which are, however, only truths of definition. These definitions rest upon simple, but abstract, suppositions, and all truths in this category are only constructed, but abstract, consequences of these definitions ... Physical truths, to the contrary, are in no way arbitrary, and do not depend on us.
I like a thing simple but it must be simple through complication. Everything must come into your scheme, otherwise you cannot achieve real simplicity.
You cannot do silhouettes in fantasy. Ah, no, you must be faithful. It is, the art, a, what you call, paradox. It is always that you must be simple, and then, if you are simple, you will stimulate the imagination of the observer.
Simple statements are to be prized more highly than less simple ones because they tell us more; because their empirical content is greater; and because they are better testable.
The psychology of a complex mind must differ almost as much from that of a simple, mechanized mind as its psychology would from ours; because something that must underlie and perhaps be even greater than sex is involved.
But shall gravity be therefore called an occult cause, and thrown out of philosophy, because the cause of gravity is occult and not yet discovered? Those who affirm this, should be careful not to fall into an absurdity that may overturn the foundations of all philosophy. For causes usually proceed in a continued chain from those that are more compounded to those that are more simple; when we are arrived at the most simple cause we can go no farther ... These most simple causes will you then call occult and reject them? Then you must reject those that immediately depend on them.
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