This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
The research worker, in his efforts to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. He should take simplicity into consideration in a subordinate way to beauty... It often happens that the requirements of simplicity and beauty are the same, but where they clash, the latter must take precedence.
Beauty | Consideration | Nature | Research | Simplicity | Beauty |
Peace Pilgrim, born Mildred Lisette Norman Ryder
Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. If you have them, you have to take care of them! There is great freedom in simplicity of living. It is those who have enough but not too much who are the happiest.
Care | Enough | Freedom | Possessions | Simplicity |
Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.
Absolute | Achievement | Genius | Important | Means | Men | Method | Position | Rank | Simplicity | Value |
Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
The simplicity of nature is not to be measured by that of our conceptions. Infinitely varied in its effects, nature is simple only in its causes, and its economy consists in producing a great number of phenomena, often very complicated, by means of a small number of general laws.
Means | Nature | Simplicity |
Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
The present state of the system of nature is evidently a consequence of what it was in the preceding moment, and if we conceive of an intelligence that at a given instant comprehends all the relations of the entities of this universe, it could state the respective position, motions, and general effects of all these entities at any time in the past or future. Physical astronomy, the branch of knowledge that does the greatest honor to the human mind, gives us an idea, albeit imperfect, of what such an intelligence would be. The simplicity of the law by which the celestial bodies move, and the relations of their masses and distances, permit analysis to follow their motions up to a certain point; and in order to determine the state of the system of these great bodies in past or future centuries, it suffices for the mathematician that their position and their velocity be given by observation for any moment in time. Man owes that advantage to the power of the instrument he employs, and to the small number of relations that it embraces in its calculations. But ignorance of the different causes involved in the production of events, as well as their complexity, taken together with the imperfection of analysis, prevents our reaching the same certainty about the vast majority of phenomena. Thus there are things that are uncertain for us, things more or less probable, and we seek to compensate for the impossibility of knowing them by determining their different degrees of likelihood. So it was that we owe to the weakness of the human mind one of the most delicate and ingenious of mathematical theories, the science of chance or probability.
Chance | Future | Honor | Ignorance | Imperfection | Impossibility | Intelligence | Knowing | Knowledge | Law | Majority | Man | Mind | Nature | Observation | Order | Past | Position | Power | Present | Science | Simplicity | System | Time | Weakness |
Variety in poetry breeds self-indulgence; in gymnastics, disease: simplicity there puts temperance in the soul; here it puts health in the body.
Health | Poetry | Simplicity |
Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL
Our evangelizing zeal must spring from true holiness of life, and, as the Second Vatican Council suggests, preaching must in its turn make the preacher grow in holiness, which is nourished by prayer… The world which, paradoxically, despite innumerable signs of the denial of God, is nevertheless searching for Him in unexpected ways and painfully experiencing the need of Him- the world is calling for evangelizers to speak to it of a God whom the evangelists themselves should know and be familiar with as if they could see the invisible. The world calls for and expects from us simplicity of life, the spirit of prayer, charity towards all, especially towards the lowly and the poor, obedience and humility, detachment and self-sacrifice. Without this mark of holiness, our word will have difficulty in touching the heart of modern man. It risks being vain and sterile.
Charity | Detachment | Difficulty | God | Heart | Need | Obedience | Simplicity | Spirit | Will | World | Zeal | God |
A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression which classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content concerning which I am convinced that within the framework of the applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be overthrown.
Impression | Simplicity | Will |
It must be conceded that a theory has an important advantage if its basic concepts and fundamental hypotheses are 'close to experience,' and greater confidence in such a theory is certainly justified. There is less danger of going completely astray, particularly since it takes so much less time and effort to disprove such theories by experience. Yet more and more, as the depth of our knowledge increases, we must give up this advantage in our quest for logical simplicity in the foundations of physical theory.
Confidence | Danger | Effort | Important | Knowledge | Simplicity | Theories | Time | Danger |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
There is probably no point in my going into your questions now; for what I could say about your tendency to doubt or about your inability to bring your outer and inner lives into harmony or about all the other thing that oppress you - : is just what I have already said: just the wish that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith; that you may gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
Confidence | Doubt | Enough | Harmony | Life | Life | Patience | Simplicity | Solitude |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others.
Confidence | Enough | Patience | Simplicity | Solitude |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
May you find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith.
Enough | Patience | Simplicity |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
It is always what I have already said: always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case.
Confidence | Enough | Life | Life | Patience | Simplicity | Solitude |
Rashi, born Shlomo ben Yitzchok, aka Salomon Isaacides, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki NULL
Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.
Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. It postulates the difficult to explain, and leaves it at that. We cannot prove that there is no God, but we can safely conclude the He is very, very improbable indeed.
God | Hypothesis | Simplicity | God |
Darwinism is a remarkably simple theory, childlishly so, in comparison with almost all of physics and mathematics. But we have good reason for believing that this simplicity is deceptive. Simple as the theory may seem, nobody thought of it until Darwin and Wallace in the mid-19th century. How could such a simple idea go so long undiscovered by thinkers of the calibre of Newton, Galileo, Descartes, Hume and Aristotle? What was wrong with philosophers and mathematicians that they overlooked it?
Good | Reason | Simplicity | Thinkers | Thought | Wrong | Thought |
Our age has robbed millions of the simplicity of ignorance, and has so far failed to lift them to the simplicity of wisdom.
Age | Simplicity |
The greatest mathematics has the simplicity and inevitableness of supreme poetry and music, standing on the borderland of all that is wonderful in Science, and all that is beautiful in Art.
Mathematics | Poetry | Simplicity |
Margaret Fuller, fully Sara Margaret Fuller, Marchese Ossoli
Mercury has cast aside The signs of intellectual pride, Freely offers thee the soul: Art thou noble to receive? Canst thou give or take the whole, Nobly promise and believe? Then thou wholly human art, A spotless, radiant, ruby heart, And the golden chain of love Has bound thee to the realm above. Guard thee from the power of evil; Who cannot trust, vows to the devil.
Beauty | Culture | Friend | Life | Life | Light | Prison | Simplicity | Spirit | Wealth | Beauty |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
All these sensory means and exercises of the faculties must be left behind and in silence so that God Himself may affect the divine union of the soul. As a result one has to follow this method of disencumbering, emptying, and depriving the faculties of their natural rights and operations to make room for the inflow and illumination of the supernatural. If a person does not turn his eyes from his natural capacity, he will not attain to so lofty a communication; rather he will hinder it. If it is true that the soul must journey by knowing God through what He is not, rather than through what He is, it must journey, insofar as possible, by way of the denial and rejection of natural and supernatural apprehensions. This is our task now with the memory. We must draw it away from its natural props and capacities and raise it above itself (above all distinct knowledge and apprehensible possession) to supreme hope in the incomprehensible God. The annihilation of the memory in regard to all forms (including the five senses) is an absolute requirement for union with God. This union cannot be wrought without a complete separation of the memory from all forms that are not God. In great forgetfulness it is absorbed in a supreme good. Once he has the habit of union he no longer experiences these lapses of memory in matters concerning his moral and natural life. All the operations of the memory and other faculties in this state are divine.
Faith | Love | Progress | Purity | Reason | Sense | Simplicity | Soul | Will | Intellect |