The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

-Hoffman, Hans
  Search for the Real.

To define an expression is, paradoxically speaking, to explain how to get along without it. To define is to eliminate.

-Quine,Willard Van Orman
  Quiddities,'Definition'.

Weare not going after Saddam Hussein.If I caneliminate his ability to communicate with his forces, I would be entirely satisfied with that result.

-Schwarzkopf, H Norman
  Press briefing on the start of the Gulf War,15 Jan.