From the state of the Uncarved Block comes the ability to enjoy the simple and the quiet, the natural and the plain. Along with that comes the ability to do things spontaneously and have them work, odd as that may appear to others at times.
We must teach ourselves…to see the beauty of the commonplace. It is so much greater to make much out of little than to make little out of much - Better to make a big thing out of a little subject than to make a little thing out of a big one.
Simplicity is a requirement of mass adoption. Look at the iPhone, Google, Amazon, and Uber as examples: The iPhone never shipped with a manual. Turn it on. Press the screen with your finger. It just works. Google gives you a box with two buttons. Type what you’re looking for and hit enter. There’s your answer. Amazon lets you order anything you can imagine. Even with one click. Then it shows up on your doorstep a few days later. Even sooner with Prime. Uber: I’m here. Take me there. Ok, done.
This isn’t to say that simple products don’t have extremely complex technical underpinnings. Almost no iPhone or Google user has any conception of the software that enables their seamless technology experiences. The part they touch makes the technology disappear.
Great things often begin small, but God’s miracles are manifest daily.
By small and simple means—in which we are each invited to participate—great things are brought to pass.
It is true intelligence for a man to take a subject that is mysterious and great in itself, and to unfold and simplify it so that a child can understand it.
The only simplicity for which I would give a straw is that which is on the other side of the complex — not that which never has divined it.
Some members profess that they would commit themselves with enthusiasm if given some great calling, but they do not find home teaching or visiting teaching worthy of or sufficiently heroic for their sustained effort.
The picture that looks as if it were done without an effort may have been a perfect battlefield in its making.
Where simplicity prevails angels hail.
“The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life because everything is pulling you to be more and more complex.”