Donna Karan Quotes

Creativity has more to do with the elimination of the inessential than with inventing something new.

Most people in business and within their personal lives move towards complexity. More To Dos. More projects. More products. More meetings. More possessions. More goals. The best - I suggest to you - move in the opposite direction.

A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by with-that's poverty-but how efficiently we can put first things first. . . . When you're clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether it's clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar. (148)

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Less is more.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

What's really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer.

Through your life, most people peel away the junk that's not useful, that's superfluous. You are determined to peel that away. I do one thing at a time. One man at a time. One car. One house. One child. One job.

I have learned to pare down what I do and still be effective and strong in a role.

I don't put the focus on things that don't matter.

I sometimes think less is more. If you cut yourself in too many places, it is hard to execute.

If you think about stripping away 80 percent of the things that don't matter and focusing on the the 20 percent that will actually make a difference, I think you'll find great results even in the toughest of situations and the harshest of environments.

Live uncluttered lives so you could have time for what is most important.

One of the most significant design principles is to omit the unimportant in order to emphasize the important.

I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential.

... and you can only have 2 or 3 things everyday, because everything else will just come at you; you know fires in a day.

Simplicity requires ruthlessness.

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness, but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities.

People who don’t know how to summarize have no dignity. Neither do people who needlessly drag on their messy lives. They who don’t know the beauty of simplification, of pruning away the unnecessary, die without ever comprehending the true meaning of life.

To know what to leave out and what to put in; just where and just how, ah, that is to have been educated in knowledge of simplicity.

Believe it or not, it is not only possible to accomplish more by doing less, it is mandatory. Enter the world of elimination.

A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life.

You don't have to do everything; just do what really matters.