A Quote by George Sarton

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.

George Sarton

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Ability Acceptance Accepted Always Astonishing Astonishment Becomes Been Cause Complicated Difficult Even Fundamental Further General Higher Higher Level Ideas Inability Intelligent People Level Me Mechanisms More Most Only People Possible Progress Questions Rare Simple Simple Ideas Them Understand Use

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George Sarton
American - Historian
August 31, 1884 - March 22, 1956

The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.

John Locke

Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life it requires the greatest discipline to be simple, and the acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook upon life.

Carl Jung

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.

Mortimer Adler

In every science, after having analysed the ideas, expressing the more complicated by means of the more simple, one finds a certain number that cannot be reduced among them, and that one can define no further. These are the primitive ideas of the science; it is necessary to acquire them through experience, or through induction; it is impossible to explain them by deduction.

Giuseppe Peano

I hope that my ideas attract a lively dialogue, even if my sentences are simple. Simple sentences have always served me well. And I don't use semicolons. It's hard to read anyway, especially for high school kids. Also, I avoid irony, too. I don't like people saying one thing and meaning the other.

Kurt Vonnegut

I believe that almost all important, useful ideas are simple. Peter Whittle has recently put it nicely in an autobiographical essay. "If a piece of work is heavy and complicated then it is wrong." . . . Some writers feel that to express their ideas in simple terms is degrading. Some use complexity to disguise the paucity of their material. In fact, simplicity is a virtue and when, as here, it is both original and useful, it can represent a real advance in knowledge.

Dennis Lindley

It took me a long time to understand the relationship between ideas and between objective facts. But after I clearly understood this relationship, I didn't fool around with other wild ideas. That is one of the main reasons why I just make my scheme as simple as possible.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

You can teach people specific reasoning, such as how to fly a kite or build a wheel. General reasoning cannot be imparted upon people, particularly if they like things the way they are - meaning, if their reactions are very simple. The reason most people behave badly or poorly is because they only understand simple things.

Jacque Fresco

The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.

Terry Pratchett

The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its own operations, take notice, also, that a certain number of these simple ideas go constantly together... which, by inadvertency, we apt afterward to talk of and condier as one simple idea.

John Locke

A helpful thing for me has always been - this is from a great acting teacher Declan Donnellan - is this beautiful way of expressing how and why people do things that other people may not do. It's a simple sentence that says, 'I understand you; you don't understand me.'

Benedict Samuel

Complex things, if you don't understand them, it seems complicated. If you understand them, and we know how to handle it, it became simple.

Erno Rubik

Simple ideas are easier to understand. Ideas that are easier to understand are repeated. Ideas that are repeated change the world.

Simon Sinek

I think a lot of tunes can suffer from being so simple, so either they get over-complicated or their simplicity means the simple way to lay them down becomes the difficulty.

Thom Yorke

I told you that your dream was a difficult one. It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them.

Paulo Coelho

Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of idea the artist is free to even surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition.

Sol LeWitt

A Quote by George Sarton

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