“Nature operates in the shortest way possible.” — Aristotle
“Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses.” — Ernst Mach
“The research worker, in his effort to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. It often happens that the requirements of simpliciuty and beauty are the same, but where they clash the latter must take precedence.” — Paul Dirac
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” — William Shakespeare
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” — Albert Einstein
“Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, call me Trim Tab.” — Buckminster Fuller
“In my opinion, the theory here is the logically simplest relativistic field theory that is at all possible. But this does not mean that nature might not obey a more complex theory. More complex theories have frequently been proposed. In my view, such more complicated systems and their combinations should be considered only if there exist physical-empirical reasons to do so.” — Albert Einstein
“It is only in language that one can mean something by something.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein
“Man makes the word, and the word means nothing which the man has not made it mean, and that only to some other man. But since man can think only by means of words or other external symbols, these might turn around and say: You mean nothing which we have not taught you, and then only so far as you address some word as the interpretant of your thought… … . the word or sign which man uses is the man himself Thus my language is the sum-total of myself; for the man is the thought.” — Charles Sanders Peirce
“Lurking behind chartjunk is contempt both for information and for the audience. Clarity and simplicity are the complete opposite of simple-mindedness. Data-thin, forgetful displays move viewers toward ignorance and passivity.” — Edward Tufte
“The best is the enemy of the good.” — Voltaire
“We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.” — Isaac Newton
