William Albert Allard Quotes

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

One thing I've learned over my career is that simplicity is the key: on the field, off as well.

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.

My goal is to omit everything superfluous so that the essential is shown to best possible advantage.

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.

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.

That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

I'll say life is simpler.

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.

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.

So much of artistic creation is just exclusion. It's not creating things; it's just excluding things that really aren't going to be helpful.

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)

Simplicity requires ruthlessness.

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

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.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

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

It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.

I'm quite an untidy person in a lot of ways. But order makes me happy. I have to have a clear desk and a tidy desktop, with as few visual distractions as possible. I don't mind sound distractions, but visual ones freak me out.

I can't focus when there's too many things around. Whenever I used to go to the office, I used to always say, 'Tidy up.'

When you remove layers, simplicity and speed happen.

I am completely attracted to the idea of simplicity, or at least removing things that seem unnecessary when trying to get an idea out there.