. . . money . . . is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel, animals feel, and vice versa, but animals do not know about money.
Gertrude SteinRead
I like a thing simple but it must be simple through complication. Everything must come into your scheme, otherwise you cannot achieve real simplicity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True simplicity emerges from the understanding and integration of complexities.
This quote by Gertrude Stein suggests that simplicity is not merely about making things less intricate, but rather about creating an order out of the complexities of life. She argues that to achieve real simplicity, one must embrace and understand the complications present, weaving them into a coherent scheme that leads to an elegant and meaningful simplicity.
Themes
SimplicityComplexityUnderstandingArtIntegration
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation about design, you could use this quote to emphasize the importance of understanding complexities to create a simple product.
More from Gertrude Stein
All quotes βThe creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.
Gertrude SteinRead
If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.
Gertrude SteinRead
The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.
Gertrude SteinRead
I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods.
Gertrude SteinRead
It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.
Gertrude SteinRead
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