Original artwork, not a still
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
Part design rule and part warning: strip a theory to its essentials, but stop before you break it. The compact version is far better advice than the lecture sentence it came from, which is probably why it spread to design, writing and software, where it is repeated as a rule of thumb. It is a case of the world editing a great scientist into a better slogan than he wrote.
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In context
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The famous wording is a tidy paraphrase of something Einstein said in his Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford on 10 June 1933, "On the Method of Theoretical Physics". There he said the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without surrendering the adequate representation of a single datum of experience. The punchy form is not found in his writings. Quote Investigator traces it to composer Roger Sessions in The New York Times on 8 January 1950, and to Reader's Digest in July 1977.
Sources (2)
- Quote Investigator: Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simplermain articleReference checked
- Wikiquote: Albert EinsteinQuotes, first entryReference checked
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