Abstract Quotes - Page 14

• Mengistu does not understand the meaning of self-determination, either historically or in the abstract. He cannot conceive of a nation as anything but an absolute centralized authority, totalitarianism, for his rule is nothing less than that now.

  Mengistu Haile Mariam

  Determination, Self, Doe

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• As Buddhist teachers often point out, knowledge, in the sense of prajña, is not knowledge about anything. There is no abstract knower of an experience that is separate from the experience itself.

  Francisco Varela

  Teacher, Buddhist

  Eleanor Rosch, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela (1992). “The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience”, p.26, MIT Press

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• Ethics is not just an abstract intellectual discipline. It is about the conflicts that arise in trying to meet real human needs and values.

  John Ziman

  Real, Discipline, Intellectual

  "Why must scientists become more ethically sensitive than they used to be?" by John Ziman, Science, December 4, 1998.

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• Heartbreak is our indication of sincerity: in a love relationship, in a work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is just as much an essence and emblem of care as the spiritual athlete's quick but abstract ability to let go... But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.

  David Whyte

  Letting Go, Spiritual, Athlete

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• Music is at once the most wonderful, the most alive of all the arts- it is the most abstract, the most perfect, the most pure- and the most sensual. I listen with my body and it is my body that aches in response to the passion and pathos embodied in this music.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Passion, Perfect

  Susan Sontag (2009). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, p.10, Macmillan

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• Freedom is not an empty sound; it is not an abstract idea; it is not a thing that nobody can feel. It means, - and it means nothing else, - the full and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you have not this, if this be not well secured to you, you may call yourself what you will, but you are a slave.

  William Cobbett

  Wisdom, Mean, Ideas

  William Cobbett (2012). “A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland”, p.231, TAN Books

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• Centralize property in the hands of a few and the millions are under bondage to property - a bondage as absolute and deplorable as if their limbs were covered with manacles. Abstract all property from the hands of labor and you thereby reduce labor to dependence; and that dependence becomes as complete a servitude as the master could fix upon his slave.

  Lewis Henry Morgan

  Wisdom, Hands, Politics

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• The essence of capitalism is expressed in two of its basic features: a) profit maximization and b) market competition. In their abstract formulations none of them was supposed to have anything conspiratorial against the poor. But in real life they turn out to be the "killers" of the poor - by making rich the richer and poor the poorer.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Real, Essence, Two

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• This is the universal property of the human mind. Abstract rules form the core of everything from computer programs to grammars. Our results show that babies' minds are built to look for such rules - even without being told.

  Gary Marcus

  Baby, Mind, Looks

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• It's all about this abstract entity called the story. It's all about the best way to tell the story, and to make a movie about the issues that this story is about. Filmmaking is storytelling, for me.

  Jose Padilha

  Issues, Stories, Way

  Source: collider.com

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• As the places where Americans dwell become evermore depressing and impossible, Disneyworld is where they escape to worship the nation in the abstract, a cartoon capital of a cartoon republic enshrining the falsehoods, half-truths, and delusions that prop up the squishy thing the national character has become--for instance, that we are a nation of families; that we care about our fellow citizens; that history matters; that there is a place called home.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Depressing, Home, Character

  James Howard Kunstler (1993). “The geography of nowhere: the rise and decline of America's man-made landscape”

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• I think that metaphor really is a key to explaining thought and language. The human mind comes equipped with an ability to penetrate the cladding of sensory appearance and discern the abstract construction underneath - not always on demand, and not infallibly, but often enough and insightfully enough to shape the human condition. Our powers of analogy allow us to apply ancient neural structures to newfound subject matter, to discover hidden laws and systems in nature, and not least, to amplify the expressive power of language itself.

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Law, Keys

  Steven Pinker (2007). “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature”, p.282, Penguin

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• Plain experience and common sense inform us that no abstract Person can have made us as we are without also wishing to delete us and start over (Gen. 8:21; Zeph. 1:2). Therefore, the existence of cruel and arbitrary nature, together with the universality of human sin, prevents us from beginning the theological enterprise with any concept of God that is distinct from revelation. All theologies of a cosmic harmonic principle shipwreck on the truths of tragedy, catastrophe, and injustice.

  Paul F. M. Zahl

  Common Sense, Starting Over, Together

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• Bin Laden didn't come from the abstract. He came from somewhere, and if you look where ... you'll see America's hand of villainy.

  Harry Belafonte

  Hands, America, Looks

  "Did Harry Belafonte Dishonor America?". "The O'Reilly Factor" with Bill O'Reilly, www.foxnews.com. December 02, 2005.

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• Maybe stalking the woods is as vital to the human condition as playing music or putting words to paper. Maybe hunting has as much of a claim on our civilized selves as anything else. After all, the earliest forms of representational art reflect hunters and prey. While the arts were making us spiritually viable, hunting did the heavy lifting of not only keeping us alive, but inspiring us. To abhor hunting is to hate the place from which you came, which is akin to hating yourself in some distant, abstract way.

  Steven Rinella

  Art, Hate, Hunting

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• Programming in the abstract sense is what I really enjoy. I enjoy lots of different areas of it... I'm taking a great deal of enjoyment writing device drivers for Linux. I could also be having a good time writing a database manager or something because there are always interesting problems.

  John Carmack

  Writing, Interesting, Linux

  Firing Squad Interview with Bob Colayco, February 9, 2000.

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• Abstract truth is the eye of reason.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Truth, Eye, Reason

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• General abstract truth is the most precious of all blessings; without it, man is blind; it is the eye of reason.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Truth, Eye, Men

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1783). “The Confessions of J.J. Rousseau: With The Reveries of the Solitary Walker”

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• It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to blood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui.

  William Hazlitt

  Thinking, Blood, Ideas

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• He who talks much about virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspected; it is shrewdly guessed that where there is great preaching there will be little almsgiving.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Littles, Virtue, Almsgiving

  Thomas Carlyle (1881). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished”, p.7

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• The power to love what is purely abstract is given to few.

  Margot Asquith

  Given

  Margot Asquith (1934). “More Or Less about Myself”

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• Good-nature is that benevolent and amiable temper of mind which disposes us to feel the misfortunes and enjoy the happiness of others, and, consequently, pushes us on to promote the latter and prevent the former; and that without any abstract contemplation on the beauty of virtue, and without the allurements or terrors of religion.

  Henry Fielding

  Mind, Virtue, Contemplation

  Henry Fielding, Thomas Roscoe (1853). “The Works of Henry Fielding, Complete in One Volume”, p.645

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• fashion seems to exist for an abstract person who is not you or me.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Fashion, Persons, Seems

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

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• A man may talk inspiringly to a woman about love in the abstract--but the look in his eyes is always perfectly concrete.

  Helen Rowland

  Eye, Men, Looks

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• I was struck by the absence, even among very young boys and girls, of any interior motivation; they were incapable of thinking, of inventing, of imagining, of choosing, of deciding for themselves; this incapacity was expressed by their conformism; in every domain of life they employed only the abstract measure of money, because they were unable to trust to their own judgment.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Girl, Money, Motivation

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