Parsimony quotes:

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Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment. -- Edmund Burke
The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque. -- Philip K. Dick
Parsimony is enough to make the master of the golden mines as poor as he that has nothing; for a man may be brought to a morsel of bread by parsimony as well as profusion. -- Henry Home, Lord Kames
There is nothing worse than being ashamed of parsimony or poverty. -- Livy
Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. -- Edmund Burke
If time is money, it seems moral to save time, above all one's own, and such parsimony is excused by consideration for others. One is straight-forward. -- Theodor Adorno
A parsimony of words prodigal of sense. -- Benjamin Disraeli
What in the rising man was industry and economy, becomes in the rich man parsimony and avarice. -- Sarah Josepha Hale
With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich. -- Seneca the Younger
The principle of parsimony is valid esthetically in that the artist must not go beyond what is needed for his purpose. -- Rudolf Arnheim
Nothing perhaps has so retarded the reception of the higher conclusions of Geology among men in general, as ... [the] instinctive parsimony of the human mind in matters where time is concerned. -- Charles Lapworth
Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distinctive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection. -- Edmund Burke
Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigalityand misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not onlyaffords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands?but?he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come. -- Adam Smith
While society cannot provide employment for its members, the production/work/income nexus has to be abandoned as a justification for our present parsimony to the unemployed. An assumption cannot be used to justify making second-class citizens of those who are unfortunate enough to constitute living proof of the inaccuracy of that assumption. -- Bob Hawke
It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine. -- Richard Dawkins
My father died when I was two years old. But my mother was quite capable. She raised three children with his war pension which was peanuts. Yet we did not want for anything. We grew up with a certain parsimony, which is a nice thing. Then if life gives you more good, otherwise you get used to. I'm still thrifty. -- Giulio Andreotti
Well I don't feel sectarian against sparseness, although I sometimes get a little chippy about this. I resent the way that a certain notion of parsimony has become the norm for skilful literary writing. -- China Mieville

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