53 Simple living advocates

Antisthenes was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Socrates. Antisthenes first learned rhetoric under Gorgias before becoming an ardent disciple of Socrates. He adopted and developed the ethical side of Socrates' teachings, advocating an ascetic life lived in accordance with virtue. Later writers regarded him as the founder of Cynic philosophy.

Ludovico Ariosto was an Italian poet. He is best known as the author of the romance epic Orlando Furioso (1516). The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, describes the adventures of Charlemagne, Orlando, and the Franks as they battle against the Saracens with diversions into many sideplots. The poem is transformed into a satire of the chivalric tradition. Ariosto composed the poem in the ottava rima rhyme scheme and introduced narrative commentary throughout the work.

Roscoe Gardner Bartlett is an American politician who was U.S. Representative for Maryland's 6th congressional district, serving from 1993 to 2013. He is a member of the Republican Party and was a member of the Tea Party Caucus. At the end of his tenure in Congress, Bartlett was the second-oldest serving member of the House of Representatives, behind fellow Republican Ralph Hall of Texas.

Colin Beavan is an American non-fiction writer and internet blogger noted for recording the attempts of his family to live a "zero impact" lifestyle in New York City for one year.

Joshua Becker is an American author, writer, and philanthropist.

Wendell Erdman Berry is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

Mark Boyle, also known as The Moneyless Man, is an Irish writer best known for living without money from November 2008, and for living without modern technology since 2016. Boyle writes regularly for the British newspaper The Guardian, and has written about his experiences in a couple of books. His first book, The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living, was published in 2010. His fourth book, The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology, was published in 2019. Boyle lives near Loughrea, in the west of Ireland.

Lucius Duncan Bulkley was an American dermatologist and alternative cancer treatment advocate.

Ernest Callenbach was an American author, film critic, editor, and simple living adherent. He became famous due to his internationally successful semi-utopian novel Ecotopia (1975).

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". Time magazine observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."

Emil Mihai Cioran was a Romanian philosopher and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms. His works frequently engaged with issues of suffering, decay, and nihilism. In 1937, Cioran moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris, which became his permanent residence, wherein he lived in seclusion with his partner, Simone Boué.

Crates of Thebes was a Greek Cynic philosopher, the principal pupil of Diogenes of Sinope and the husband of Hipparchia of Maroneia who lived in the same manner as him. Crates gave away his money to live a life of poverty on the streets of Athens. Respected by the people of Athens, he is remembered for being the teacher of Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism. Various fragments of Crates' teachings survive, including his description of the ideal Cynic state.

William Henry Davies was a Welsh poet and writer. He spent much of his life as a tramp or hobo in the United Kingdom and the United States, yet became one of the most popular poets of his time. His themes included observations on life's hardships, the ways the human condition is reflected in nature, his tramping adventures, and the characters he met. Davies is usually classed as a Georgian Poet, though much of his work is not typical of the group in style or theme.

Diogenes, also known as Diogenes the Cynic, was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. He was born in Sinope, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC.

Duane Elgin is an American author, speaker, educator, consultant, and media activist.

Vernard Marion Eller was an American author, Christian pacifist and minister in the Church of the Brethren. Born in Everett, Washington and raised in Wenatchee, Eller graduated from the University of La Verne and Bethany Theological Seminary, then earned a master's degree from Northwestern University and a doctorate from Pacific School of Religion. He was professor of philosophy and religion at the University of La Verne for thirty-four years. He wrote over 20 books including The Mad Morality and Christian Anarchy: Jesus' Primacy Over the Powers.

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly the Cynics, he turned against the Platonism of his day and established his own school, known as "the Garden", in Athens. Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects. He openly allowed women and slaves to join the school as a matter of policy. Epicurus is said to have originally written over 300 works on various subjects, but the vast majority of these writings have been lost. Only three letters written by him—the letters to Menoeceus, Pythocles, and Herodotus—and two collections of quotes—the Principal Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings—have survived intact, along with a few fragments of his other writings. Most knowledge of his teachings comes from later authors, particularly the biographer Diogenes Laërtius, the Epicurean Roman poet Lucretius and the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, and with hostile but largely accurate accounts by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, and the Academic Skeptic and statesman Cicero.

Francis of Assisi, venerated as Saint Francis of Assisi, also known in his ministry as Francesco, was an Italian Catholic friar, deacon, mystic, and preacher. He founded the men's Order of Friars Minor, the women's Order of St. Clare, the Third Order of St. Francis and the Custody of the Holy Land. Francis is one of the most venerated religious figures in Christianity.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule and in turn to inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā, first applied to him in 1914 in South Africa, is now used throughout the world.

Manfred Gnädinger a.k.a. Man or O Alemán was a German hermit and sculptor who lived in the village of Camelle, on the Costa da Morte, in Galicia (Spain). He lived a very simple and natural life, building sculptures on the beach where he lived and tending to his small garden. In November 2002, when the oil spill of the Prestige destroyed his sculptures and the ecosystem of the area he lived in, it is thought that Man let himself die of melancholy and sadness, thus becoming a symbol of the destruction unleashed by the oil spill.

Edward René David Goldsmith, widely known as Teddy Goldsmith, was an Anglo-French environmentalist, writer and philosopher.

Rob Greenfield is an American adventurer, environmental activist, and entrepreneur. He has "made it his life's purpose to inspire a healthy Earth, often with attention-grabbing tactics".

Lala Har Dayal Singh Mathur was an Indian nationalist revolutionary and freedom fighter. He was a polymath who turned down a career in the Indian Civil Service. His simple living and intellectual acumen inspired many expatriate Indians living in Canada and the U.S. in their campaign against British rule in India during the First World War.

Ammon Ashford Hennacy (1893–1970) was an American Christian pacifist, anarchist, social activist, member of the Catholic Worker Movement, and Wobbly. He established the Joe Hill House of Hospitality in Salt Lake City, Utah and practiced tax resistance.

Tom Hodgkinson is a British writer, and the editor of The Idler, which he established in 1993 with his friend Gavin Pretor-Pinney. His philosophy, in his published books and articles, is of a relaxed approach to life, enjoying it as it comes rather than toiling for an imagined better future. The Idler was originally a series of essays written by Dr Johnson from 1758 to 1760.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."

Béa Johnson is a US-based environmental activist, author and motivational speaker. She is best known for waste free living by reducing her family's annual trash down to a pint and for authoring the book Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste. Having started to adhere to simple living as early as 2006, Johnson is widely recognized for pioneering and popularizing waste-free living.

Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, is an American domestic terrorist and former mathematics professor. He was a mathematics prodigy, but abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a primitive life. Between 1978 and 1995, he killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the environment. He issued a social critique opposing industrialization and advocating a nature-centered form of anarchism.

George Skene Keith M.D., F.R.C.P., LL.D was a Scottish physician, photographer and author.

Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, also known as Ayatollah Khomeini, was an Iranian political and religious leader. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the end of the Persian monarchy. Following the revolution, Khomeini became the country's first supreme leader, a position created in the constitution of the Islamic Republic as the highest-ranking political and religious authority of the nation, which he held until his death. Most of his period in power was taken up by the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988. He was succeeded by Ali Khamenei on 4 June 1989.

Satish Kumar is an Indian British activist and speaker. He has been a Jain monk, nuclear disarmament advocate and pacifist. Now living in England, Kumar is founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College international centre for ecological studies, and is Editor Emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. His most notable accomplishment is the completion, together with a companion, E. P. Menon, of a peace walk of over 8,000 miles in 1973–4, from New Delhi to Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C., the capitals of the world's earliest nuclear-armed countries. He insists that reverence for nature should be at the heart of every political and social debate.

Lin Yutang was a Chinese inventor, linguist, novelist, philosopher, and translator. His informal but polished style in both Chinese and English made him one of the most influential writers of his generation, and his compilations and translations of classic Chinese texts into English were bestsellers in the West.

Kaarlo Pentti Linkola was a prominent Finnish deep ecologist, ornithologist, polemicist, naturalist, writer, and fisherman. He wrote widely about his ideas and in Finland was a prominent thinker. Linkola was a year-round fisherman from 1959 to 1995. He fished on Keitele, Päijänne and Gulf of Finland, and since 1978 he fished on Vanajavesi.

Mozi, original name Mo Di, was a Chinese philosopher who founded the school of Mohism during the Hundred Schools of Thought period. The ancient text Mozi contains material ascribed to him and his followers.

Mr. Money Mustache is the website and pseudonym of 47-year-old Canadian-born blogger Peter Adeney. Adeney retired from his job as a software engineer in 2005 at age 30 by spending only a small percentage of his annual salary and consistently investing the remainder, primarily in stock market index funds. Adeney lives in Longmont, Colorado, and contends that most middle-class individuals can and should spend less money and own fewer physical possessions. He argues that by doing this, they can live with increased financial freedom and happiness, reducing their environmental footprint in the process. He has described the typical middle-class lifestyle as "an exploding volcano of wastefulness," particularly citing the overuse of and overspending on new cars as an example. The blog has been featured and cited in various media outlets including Market Watch, CBS News, and The New Yorker, as well as others.

Helen Knothe Nearing was an American author, advocate of simple living and a lifelong vegetarian.

Scott Nearing was an American radical economist, educator, writer, political activist, pacifist, vegetarian and advocate of simple living.

Lasse Nordlund (1965) is a Finnish social thinker who is known for his experiment of living completely self-sufficiently in the Finnish countryside, producing his clothes and tools and cultivating his food from his small farm and what he gathered from the surrounding country.

Felix Leopold Oswald was a Belgian American physician, naturalist, secularist and freethought writer.

Peace Pilgrim, born Mildred Lisette Norman, was an American spiritual teacher, mystic, pacifist, vegetarian activist and peace activist. In 1952, she became the first woman to walk the entire length of the Appalachian Trail in one season. Starting on January 1, 1953, in Pasadena, California, she adopted the name "Peace Pilgrim" and walked across the United States for 28 years, speaking with others about peace. She was on her seventh cross-country journey when she died.

Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Swami or Srila Prabhupada, born Abhay Charan De, was an Indian spiritual teacher and the founder-acharya (preceptor) of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), commonly known as the "Hare Krishna movement". Members of the ISKCON movement view Bhaktivedanta Swami as a representative and messenger of Krishna Chaitanya.

Mohammad-Ali Rajai was the second president of Iran from 2 to 30 August 1981 after serving as prime minister under Abolhassan Banisadr. He was also minister of foreign affairs from 11 March 1981 to 15 August 1981, while he was prime minister. He was assassinated in a bombing on 30 August 1981 along with prime minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar.

Louis Rimbault was a French individualist anarchist and promoter of simple living and veganism.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational thought.

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation, which characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind noumenal will. Building on the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, Schopenhauer developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the contemporaneous ideas of German idealism. He was among the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance. His work has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism.

Ernst Friedrich Schumacher was a German-British statistician and economist who is best known for his proposals for human-scale, decentralised and appropriate technologies. He served as Chief Economic Advisor to the British National Coal Board from 1950 to 1970, and founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group in 1966.

Dugald Patterson McDougall Semple was a Scottish advocate of simple living and animal rights, naturalist, prolific author, and fruitarian. He is sometimes credited with co-founding the vegan movement in 1944 without using the term "vegan".

Thiruvalluvar, commonly known as Valluvar, was a celebrated Tamil poet and philosopher. He is best known as the author of the Tirukkuṟaḷ, a collection of couplets on ethics, political and economical matters, and love. The text is considered an exceptional and widely cherished work of the Tamil literature.

William Thomas Hallenback, Jr., known as William Thomas or simply as Thomas, was an American anti-nuclear activist and simple-living adherent who undertook a 27-year peace vigil – the longest recorded vigil in US history – in front of the White House.

Henry David Thoreau was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience", an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.

Louis Cachet, better known as Varg Vikernes, is a Norwegian musician and writer best known for his early black metal albums and later crimes. His first four records, issued under the name Burzum from 1991 to 1994, made him one of the most influential figures in black metal. In 1994, he was convicted of murder and arson, and subsequently served 15 years in prison.

Bob Wells is an American vandweller, YouTuber, and author. He is noted for being an inspiration to thousands of people who embrace a minimalistic and nomadic lifestyle centered on vandwelling. Wells founded the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, an annual gathering of vandwellers in Quartzsite, Arizona, and Homes on Wheels Alliance, a charity organization dedicated to the promotion of vandwelling.

Ellen Gould White was an American author and co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Along with other Adventist leaders such as Joseph Bates and her husband James White, she was instrumental within a small group of early Adventists who formed what became known as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. White is considered a leading figure in American vegetarian history. The Smithsonian magazine named Ellen G. White among the "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time." White's writings still influence people today.