Abstract Quotes - Page 23

• To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.

  Ben Shahn

  Essence, Matter, Draws

  Ben Shahn (1957). “The Shape of Content”, p.63, Harvard University Press

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• But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Eye, Men, Thinking

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• Obama's attitude toward the rule of law is apparent in the words he used to describe what he is looking for in a nominee to replace Justice David Souter. He wants 'someone who understands justice is not just about some abstract legal theory,' he said, but someone who has 'empathy.' In other words, judges should decide cases so that the right people win, not according to the rule of law.

  Michael Barone

  Attitude, Winning, Law

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• There is more fine abstract design in Navajo rugs than in all these modern paintings.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Design, Painting, Modern

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• Storyless is not abstract. Two dancers on the stage are enough material for a story; for me, they are already a story in themselves

  George Balanchine

  Two, Dancer, Stories

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• The word of the Lord never comes to us as an opinion, no attempt is made to support it by argument, it comes as a definite, abstract statement of fact. So it is from the first words...to the last, the works of the Father are declared as facts, not theories.

  Anthony W. Ivins

  Father, Support, Firsts

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• Music, the most abstract and uncanny art, is an eternal river of sound moving through time. We can free ourselves from whatever may be holding us back, and join that flowing river.

  William Westney

  Art, Moving, Rivers

  William Westney (2006). “The Perfect Wrong Note: Learning to Trust Your Musical Self”, p.222, Amadeus Press

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• Time, that most abstract of humanity's homes.

  W. G. Sebald

  Home, Humanity

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• I have always seen life personally; my interest or sympathy or indignation is not aroused by an abstract cause but by the plight of a single person...Out of my response to an individual develops an awareness of a problem to the community, then to the country, then to the world.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Country, Community, Causes

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• One should not search for an abstract meaning of life ... Life can be made meaningful in a threefold way: first, through what we give to life ... second, by what we take from the world ... third, through the stand we take toward a fate we no longer can change.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Meaningful, Fate, Giving

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• Science sometimes improves hypotheses and sometimes disproves them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs except in the realms of totally abstract tautology. We can sometimes say that if such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such must follow absolutely. But the truth about what can be perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else again.

  Gregory Bateson

  Perception, Would Be, Matter

  "Mind and Nature - a Necessary Unity". Book by Gregory Bateson, new edition, 1988.

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• I think you have to let go of this idea that you can be precious about everything, and let it be the abstract mess that it is.

  Ryan Reynolds

  Letting Go, Thinking, Ideas

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• A picture is not a window...an abstract refers to no reality but its own.

  Jean Cocteau

  Reality, Window

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• I hate women, hate them generally, not in particular but in an abstract way. I hate them because one never really learns anything about them. They are inscrutable.

  Orson Welles

  Hate, Way, Particular

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• Once we have taken the backward step to an abstract view of our whole system of beliefs, evidence, and justification, and seen that it works only, despite its pretensions, by taking the world largely for granted, we are not in a position to contrast all these appearances with an alternative reality. We cannot shed our ordinary responses, and if we could it would leave us with no means of conceiving a reality of any kind.

  Thomas Nagel

  Taken, Mean, Reality

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• By itself photography cannot deal with the unseen, the remote, the internal, the abstract, it does not speak of Man, only of a man ; not of Tree, only a tree.

  Neil Postman

  Photography, Men, Tree

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.72, Penguin

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• We live in an age when the traditional great subjects - the human form, the landscape, even newer traditions such as abstract expressionism - are daily devalued by commercial art.

  Andy Warhol

  Art, Age, Landscape

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• I think they should have movies in restaurants. I can't believe that so many people get together just to sit there. It's so abstract... isn't it abstract? What are these people sitting here watching?

  Andy Warhol

  Believe, Thinking, Should Have

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• At first the difference will be in whatever atmosphere I bring into it. It's not going to be like, 'I really want to do The Daily Show and I'd love to turn it into an abstract musical.' I like the format and the chance to satirize the news.

  Jon Stewart

  Differences, Atmosphere, Musical

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• If the photographer is to create works that will stand for his spirit in the same way as artists in other genres, he must first - having no ready-made, abstract components such as works and sounds - supply other means to abstraction instead.

  Yukio Mishima

  Mean, Artist, Firsts

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• Peace is only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession of things "which cannot be shared," and if they raise themselves to a point where they adopt an abstract principle superior to their egotisms. In other words, it can only be obtained by a betterment of human morality.

  Julien Benda

  Men, Principles, Morality

  Julien Benda (1969). “The Treason of the Intellectuals”

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• I don't do abstract art because I don't find it as interesting as I do subjects and depictions.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Art, Interesting, Depiction

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• When you're working with an object, you can put in almost anything you want, you can make it abstract.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Want, Objects

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• If I would had been born years earlier, I would have been in all the Westerns. It's just the way that the industry goes. But now, we are in an age of a lot of different kinds of fears, and you have the science fiction and horror genres doing our morality plays the same way that they would have done in Westerns. I absolutely accept it. In every respect, fantasy is like doing abstract paintings.

  Lance Henriksen

  Years, Horror Genre, Play

  Source: collider.com

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• An idol is not necessarily something concrete, like a golden calf. It can also be something abstract, like matter. Is matter part of the created order? Sure it is. So the philosophy of materialism qualifies as an idol in the biblical sense.

  Nancy Pearcey

  Philosophy, Biblical, Order

  "Finding Truth". Interview with Jonathan Petersen, www.biblegateway.com. December 10, 2015.

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