Phil Crosby Quotes

In very simple language, Morrie always seems to be able to explain something that other people would take a chapter for, you know.

I never want to confuse people or go over their heads.

If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about.

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.

The more a subject is understood, the more briefly it may be explained.

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

Help the man-in-the-street make sense of the bewildering.

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

I am a firm believer that if you can explain it to a kid, you're on the right track.

A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.

The wonderful thing about maths is it's a totally logical subject, and a pathway has been marked out. I think a lot of these things can be crystallised in something quite essential, that people can get. If I can't explain it, I realise that's probably because I don't completely understand it myself.

Communication is about being effective, not always about being proper.

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.

I'm always telling my students that if they can't explain what they are doing, to their grandmothers, then they probably don't understand it themselves.

If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it.

Maybe I'm just a slow learner or something, but I like to have things laid out as plainly and simply as possible.

Transparency doesn't mean much if the consumer doesn't understand what they're looking at.

What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself... The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn't that true?

Clarity breeds mastery.

I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired.

[Richard Feynman] truly believed that if you couldn't explain something simply, you didn't understand it.

Explanation changes whatever is explained into something explainable.

The more you know the less you need to say.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.