Quotes & Sayings About Minimalism

Reduce what you have. Decrease what you want. — Jonathan Star

Minimalism in the service of others is a logical extension of the same ethos of selflessness. — Joshua Becker

If you have clutter in your real life, your tangible life, then it really adds to the emotional clutter in your mind. — Giuliana Rancic

Minimalism is not defined by what is not there but by the rightness of what is
and the richness with which this is experienced. — John Pawson

People like Aphex Twin, Jason Pierce, Jarvis Cocker and William Orbit are actively showing their interest in a wider field of music. Jarvis and I met on a benefit for an extraordinary man called LaMonte Young, the father of minimalism, who worked with John Cale and shared a loft with Yoko Ono. — Charles Hazlewood

If we were all minimalists instead of conspicuous consumers, there would be less demand on the world's resources and we'd have a smaller, less berserk economy. We'd be less likely to harm the only planet we'll ever have, and the super-rich would have fewer ways to exploit us. — Robert Wringham

At its core, minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from — Joshua Becker

Minimalism in interior design has become a caricature. Everywhere you find shops or hotels with an ambience that makes you feel like you are in a refrigerator. — Andree Putman

Of course one's sense of identification with the nation is inflected by all kinds of particulars, including one's class, race, gender, and sexual identification. ... But [regarding] national character ... , aside from references to a national aesthetic - literary, musical, and choreographic, there are two poles I reference: minimalist and maximalist. I love them both - the cryptic poems of Emily Dickinson folded up in tiny packets and hidden away in a box, the sparse, understated choreographies of Merce; but also the "trashy, profane and obscene" poems of Whitman and Ginsberg, [and] Martha Graham's expressionism. I am, myself, a minimalist. But I love distortion guitar and the wild exhibitionism of so many American artists. Also, these divisions are false. Emily Dickinson, in fact, can be as trashy and obscene as the best of them! Anyway, Dickinson and Whitman are at the heart of this narrative. They are the Dancing Queen and the Guitar Hero. — Barbara Browning

We had to keep explaining things, backtracking and filling gaps. We realised our own conversations had evolved into a kind of shorthand, a tidy, neat little minimalism. Covering the whole canvas in broad obvious brushstrokes for outsiders felt like a waste of sounds, time and effort. Speaking with footnotes. — Steven Hall

I think minimalism is something I just got attracted to just in general because I like the empty space, if you think about it, like there's a lot of empty space. So there are sounds there, there are chords, like coordinates, to sort of tell you where the emotion is going, but then it leaves so much room for the voice to do other things. — Pharrell Williams

The Ideal
This is where I came from.
I passed this way.
This should not be shameful
Or hard to say.
A self is a self.
It is not a screen.
A person should respect
What he has been.
This is my past
Which I shall not discard.
This is the ideal.
This is hard. — James Fenton

Minimalism is saying all by saying nothing. — Will Advise

The concept of minimalism is to relax. Like a Zen monk in training, it is something that brings equilibrium to the heart. I don't necessarily think it has any problems, but if I were to force myself to name one, I would say that since the minimalist feeling already includes its own universe, I think it might kill the drive that we would otherwise have to commit the physically impossible and attempt to travel into outer space. — Takashi Murakami

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that's stripped down. — Dave Grohl

Fashion is meant to be wild and expressive. I love colour but I also love basics - grungy minimalism mixed with this kind of broken-down cheerleader, is my thing. — Charli XCX

Minimalism is an attitude. It is the intention to keep the things that are of true value to you and to get rid of those that distract you from them. This attitude eventually becomes a way of life and is embodied in all aspects of your existence. Letting — Joshua Cole

I am a minimalist. I like saying the most with the least. — Bob Newhart

The easiest way to be accused of being a hypocrite is to become a minimalist. No matter how much you have, you can always live with less. That makes minimalism easy to dismiss. It also means that you do not make the choice to become a minimalist once, but instead make it over and over again, slowly freeing yourself of more and more possessions. — Ashley Riordan

Life's too short for minimalism. — Sophie Kinsella

Real luxury is not working like a maniac to take an expensive vacation--it is living a life you enjoy every day. — Kathy Gottberg

KISS: Keep it smart = simple. — Selim Tolga

I have much to learn from my daughter Sofia. Her minimalism exposes my limitations: I'm too instinctive and operatic, I put too much heart into my work, I get lost sometimes in bizarre things - it's my Italian heritage. — Francis Ford Coppola

Don't just declutter, de-own. — Joshua Becker

I think there's a kind of built-in arrogance to anyone who considers themself an artist. They want to feel as though like they can run the whole spectrum. "I can do it all. I can do minimalism, and I can do classical art." Well, that's not true. — Sylvester Stallone

truth is also about increasing moral minimalism. As you learn more, you should have less need for moral opinions. Or — Venkatesh G. Rao

No matter how brilliant, amusing or intelligent the creek of abstraction, Dadaism, Minimalism and Conceptualism of the 20th century was, it didn't much affect the historical river of figuration. I predict that in 50 years and in 300 years, figurative art will still be strong and important. — Mark Kostabi

A well-used minimum suffices for everything. — Jules Verne

Sometimes, minimizing possessions means a dream must die. But this is not always a bad thing. Sometimes, it takes giving up the person we wanted to be in order to fully appreciate the person we can actually become. — Joshua Becker

Simplicity isn't just a visual style. It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. — Walter Isaacson

I'm a big believer in minimalism. Not materialist minimalism, although that's part of it, but time and energy minimalism. The body is given only so much energy a day. — James Altucher

Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It's your masterpiece after all. — Nathan W. Morris

There was a big drive when I was at art school to make you aware of the economy of meaning - after all, this was still during the tail end of minimalism. Being responsible for everything you put in your picture, and being able to defend it. Keeping everything clear around you so you know what is operating. To open the wound and keep it clean. — Jane Campion

I had a very different vibe then, I was very into minimalism. I was kind of obsessed with Helmut Lang and [Martin] Margiela. — Roopal Patel

I'm still just a kid learning about minimalism, and he's a master of it. It's just really such a blessing, to be able to work with him. I want to say that after working with Rick, it humbled me to realize why I hadn't - even though I produced "Watch the Throne"; even though I produced "Dark Fantasy" - why I hadn't won Album of the Year yet. — Kanye West

Simplicity is all but nothing that's there. — Shawn Lukas

Minimalism is the new extra mile. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

My thoughts are messy, my emotions are messy, my body goes in and out at will. The raised white scars on my arms and legs are the only aspect of my being that comes close to minimalism. They came from chaos, but it is hard to carve frustration and unease into the flesh. Only straight lines. — Emma Forrest

Own less stuff. Enjoy more freedom. It really is that simple. — Joshua Becker

Minimalism means not trying to improve perfection. — Bryant McGill

I want to live simply. I want to sit by the window when it rains and read books I'll never be tested on. I want to paint because I want to, not because I've got something to prove. I want to listen to my body, fall asleep when the moon is high and wake up slowly, with no place to rush off to. I want not to be governed by money or clocks or any of the artificial restraints that humanity imposes on itself. I just want to be, boundless and infinite. — Unknown

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make - and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn't quite work. — Vivienne Westwood

Write that novel, sail that boat. And if you can't, immerse yourself in the fantasy, be the ultimate dabbler, just enjoy what it is you enjoy. It'll help you get well if you're going to get well, and it'll help you sail that great boat in the sky if that's what's going to happen. Onwards and Upwards. No regrets. — Meg Wolfe

There may be times when competition is appropriate, but life is not one of them. We have all been thrown together at this exact moment on this planet. And the sooner we stop competing against others to "win," the faster we can start working together to figure it out. The first and most important step in overcoming the habit of competition is to routinely appreciate and compliment the contribution of others. — Joshua Becker

I started reading contemporary fiction in college or right after college. It wasn't as if I was steeped in experimental minimalism when I was twelve or something. I was reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond. — Leni Zumas

Minimalism is a girl's best asset, blend tones, smudge hard outlines; if all else fails; Photoshop it. — Judith Chambers

Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over. — Ernest Hemingway,

You must have minimalism because every change, any change, has myriad side effects that can't always be allowed for. If the change is too great and the side effects too many, then it becomes certain that the outcome will be far removed from anything you've planned and that it would be entirely unpredictable. — Isaac Asimov

I think 'Tron' is a good example of minimalism. — Thomas Bangalter

For me, minimalism is about getting rid of unnecessary clutter (in all areas of life!), organizing what is left, and living in a peaceful, contented state, devoid of the extra stress that too much baggage brings to your life. — Kristen D. Smith

Jobs's intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions. If something engaged him- the user interface for the original Macintosh, the design of the iPod and iPhone, getting music companies into the iTunes Store-he was relentless. But if he did not want to deal with something - a legal annoyance, a business issue, his cancer diagnosis, a family tug- he would resolutely ignore it. That focus allowed him to say no. He got Apple back on track by cutting all except a few core products. He made devices simpler by eliminating buttons, software simpler by eliminating features, and interfaces simpler by eliminating options.
He attributed his ability to focus and his love of simplicity to his Zen training. It honed his appreciation for intuition, showed him how to filter out anything that was distracting or unnecessary, and nurtured in him an aesthetic based on minimalism. — Walter Isaacson

Minimalism now is a reaction to what came before. It's absolutely of its time. Music moved into the set theory thing, and moved out of it. — Harrison Birtwistle

When you give your items away, don't keep the excess of your pride. — Bremer Acosta

You don't need more space. You need less stuff. — Joshua Becker

Reduction is the least observed of the three R's of environmentalism ('reduce, reuse, recycle') but it's probably the most important. Reuse and recycling are sensible measures in an over-productive society, but why not neutralise the problem of overproduction at the source? Instead of choosing to act efficiently at the end of a product's life cycle by reusing or recycling it, we should stop said product from being made in the first place by eliminating consumer demand for it. If the rainforests must be burned and the oceans poisoned to cater for the essentials of human life, then so be it and we'll call it an inevitable pity; but for that to happen in the name of games consoles, cell phones and chocolate fountains is a wanton and avoidable shame. — Robert Wringham

As an evil cultist, I make an excellent evil cultist. Only I'm stupid, and not evil. And I worship nothing, really. — Will Advise

Things like anatomy and drawing and design and color had pretty much been drop-kicked out of the curriculum in the '70s, when I was studying art, in favor of abstraction and minimalism. — David Small

Minimalism is the pursuit of the essence of things, not the appearance. — Claudio Silvestrin

It's not always that we need to do more but rather that we need to focus on less. — Nathan W. Morris

The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don't. — Joshua Becker

You can kill people with sound. And if you can kill, then maybe there is also the sound that is opposite of killing. And the distance between these two points is very big. And you are free
you can choose. In art everything is possible, but everything is not necessary. — Arvo Part

...you need to assess what you love right now and what is authntic to your way of living in this season of life. — Melissa Michaels

Your character is your destiny. Building character is a task for the brave and dedicated. There are no shortcuts when it comes to building character. If you wish to cure minimalism in your own life, to develop a complete commitment to excellence and an absolute rejection of mediocrity, the question you need to start asking yourself is, "What is the most I can do?" — Matthew Kelly

I've found that the less stuff I own, the less my stuff owns me. — Nathan W. Morris

My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do. — Francine Jay

Your home is living space, not storage space. — Francine Jay

Minimalism is, in its essence, about getting rid of the negative and non-essential, so that you may focus more on the positive and important. — Thomas Hilmersen

A minimalist does not charge you for what he did. He charges you for what he did not do. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

This is today! What will tomorrow bring? Life arrives and departs on its own schedule, not ours; it's time to travel light, and be ready to go wherever it takes us. — Meg Wolfe

A big group of daily friends or a white painted house with bills and mirrors, are not a necessity to me - but an intelligent conversation while sharing another coffee, is. — Charlotte Eriksson

It's no accident that most ads are pitched to people in their 20s and 30s. Not only are they so much cuter than their elders...but they are less likely to have gone through the transformative process of cleaning out their deceased parents' stuff. Once you go through that, you can never look at *your* stuff in the same way. You start to look at your stuff a little postmortemistically. If you've lived more than two decades as an adult consumer, you probably have quite the accumulation, even if you're not a hoarder...I'm not saying I never buy stuff, because I absolutely do. Maybe I'm less naive about the joys of accumulation. — Roz Chast

"Simple" is a tricky word, it can mean a lot of things. To us, it just means clear. That doesn't always mean total reduction, or minimalism - sometimes, to make things clearer, you have to add a step. — Jason Fried

Make art and live simply. — Shawn Lukas

Useless and precious objects. Taking up space. Taking up time. — Maira Kalman

To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified. — William James

In a way, simplifying your life for vagabonding is easier than it sounds. This is because travel by its very nature demands simplicity. If you don't believe this, just go home and try stuffing everything you own into a backpack. This will never work, because no matter how meagerly you live at home, you can't match the scaled-down minimalism that travel requires. — Rolf Potts

The greatest architectural illusion is not Baroque fancy or Victorian flamboyant, but minimalism. — Kevin McCloud

I am a worried person with a stressed out soul, living a simple life with no capital. — Charlotte Eriksson

There's a fine line between minimalism and not trying very hard. — Tom Pappalardo

I really don't understand minimalism. It is so polite and boring. If you don't want anyone to notice you, you should stay home and grow your own vegetables. — Roberto Cavalli

My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated. — Abbas Kiarostami

There were missteps. Things collected that we didn't really need. Money spent that might have been saved. Arguments that we'd one day learn to navigate. — Erin Boyle

You sell off the kingdom piece by piece and trade it for a horse that will take you anywhere. — Colin Wright

Minimalism is close to mediocrity and mindlessness, a way for the ungifted to have a literary career, and for readers who really hate literature to pretend to be reading something serious. — Paul West

Selfish needs, wants, and desires needed to be obliterated. Greed, overindulgence, and gluttony had to be expunged from human behavior. The solution was in self-control, in minimalism, in sparse living conditions; one simple and a brand-new dictionary filled with words everyone would understand. — Tahereh Mafi

The rules that I adhere to are the rules of minimalism. And those rules kind of force writing to be more filmic ... to have the immediacy and accessibility of film so that the reader really has to fill in a lot of the details. — Chuck Palahniuk

Minimalism is simply a tangible way of prioritizing your life. — Faith Janes

Minimalism? It is something I appreciate as an art form but leave to others - unless you count a collection of warhorse-workwear Yves Saint Laurent trouser suits. Maybe my penchant for hippie-deluxe eccentricity came from an escapist dream of a different world. It was tough being a working mom in the 1970s. — Suzy Menkes

Also minimalism is a term that all of us who share so little in common and who are lumped together as minimalists are not terribly happy with. — Ann Beattie

O happiness! O happiness! Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my soul? Thou liest in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd playeth his pipe.

Take care! Hot noontide sleepeth on the fields. Do not sing! Hush! The world is perfect.

Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whisper! Lo - hush! The old noontide sleepeth, it moveth its mouth: doth it not just now drink a drop of happiness -

- An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something whisketh over it, its happiness laugheth. Thus - laugheth a God. Hush!

"For happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness!" Thus spoke I once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: that have I now learned. Wise fools speak better.

The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance - little maketh up the best happiness. Hush! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Life is a contradiction. Minimalism and in its simplicity opens the door to complicated analysis not just to dust free spaces. — Rohan Chalmers

CPUs. Cayce Pollard Units. That's what Damien calls the clothing she wears. CPUs are either black, white, or gray, and ideally seem to have come into this world without human intervention.
What people take for relentless minimalism is a side effect of too much exposure to the reactor-cores of fashion. This has resulted in a remorseless paring-down of what she can and will wear. She is, literally, allergic to fashion. She can only tolerate things that could have been worn, to a general lack of comment, during any year between 1945 and 2000. She's a design-free zone, a one-woman school of anti whose very austerity periodically threatens to spawn its own cult. — William Gibson

What does it mean when you hook up your work to that of a late modernist giant working in a reductive vein - Ad Reinhardt, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, or Donald Judd, for example - like a caboose? I am not talking about engaging directly with another artist's work or ideas, but of perpetuating a look or, in the case of Wade Guyton, the various monochromatic, striped and geometric surfaces we associate with Minimalism. — John Yau

The purposeful destruction of information is the essence of intelligent work. — Ray Kurzweil

Instead of trying to understand who we really are, we reach for the "Real Thing". And when the goods we buy fail to match up to those deep desires, instead of giving up on material goods, we just keep banging our heads against the wall and buying more. — James Wallman

As for clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. — Henry David Thoreau

Minimalism wasn't a real idea - it ended before it started. — Sol LeWitt

Owning less is better than organizing more. — Joshua Becker

*feels nothing* minimalism — Unknown

Where possible use Value Objects to model concepts in the downstream Context when objects from the upstream Context flow in. By doing so you can integrate with a priority on minimalism, that is, minimizing the number of properties that you assume responsibility for managing in your downstream model. Using immutable Values results in assuming less responsibility. — Anonymous