Abstract Quotes - Page 24

• The only other things I got from the abstract expressionists is the absolute belief that this canvas is the complete total area of struggle, this is the arena, this is where the fight is taking place, the battle. Everybody believes that, but you have to really believe that and work that way.

  Aaron Siskind

  Believe, Struggle, Fighting

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• All things whatsoever God in his infinite wisdom has seen fit and proper to reveal to us, while we are dwelling in mortality, in regard to our mortal bodies, are revealed to us in the abstract, and independent of affinity of this mortal tabernacle, but are revealed to our spirits precisely as though we had no bodies at all.

  Sam Smith

  Independent, Dwelling, Body

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• Photography Cannot Record Abstract Ideas (Title of a 16x20 inch photograph depicting an index card on which that phrase is handwritten.)

  Mel Bochner

  Photography, Ideas, Titles

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• I embrace the abstract in photography and exist on a few bits of order extracted from the chaos of reality.

  Ralph Gibson

  Photography, Reality, Order

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• I'm interested in producing truncated shapes in proportion to the frame and composition, shapes that are preferably luminous. I'm not interested in the full-figure. I want to abstract forms.

  Ralph Gibson

  Want, Shapes, Form

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• I have always tried to keep truth in my photographs. My work, whether realistic or abstract, has always dealt with a form of religion or imagination.

  Ralph Eugene Meatyard

  Imagination, Realistic, Photograph

  James Rhem, Ralph Eugene Meatyard (2002). “Ralph Eugene Meatyard : the family album of Lucybelle Crater and other figurative photographs”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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• The process of schooling does not give birth to human beings - as education should but never will so long as it springs from the collective consciousness of our culture - but instead it teaches us to value abstract rewards at the expense of our autonomy, curiosity, interior lives, and time.

  Derrick Jensen

  Spring, Giving, Long

  Derrick Jensen (2004). “A Language Older Than Words”, p.104, Chelsea Green Publishing

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• Freedom is not a constant attribute which we either "have" or "have not." In fact, there is no such thing as "freedom" except as a word and an abstract concept. There is only one reality: the act of freeing ourselves in the process of making choices. In this process the degree of our capacity to make choices varies with each act, with our practice of life.

  Erich Fromm

  Reality, Practice, Choices

  Erich Fromm (2011). “The Heart of Man”, p.132, Lantern Books

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• The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions.

  John Taylor Gatto

  Teacher, School, Caring

  John Taylor Gatto, Thomas Moore (2013). “Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling”, p.30, New Society Publishers

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• Freedom is an abstract offshoot. You can't describe freedom. How can you describe it? I tried and I failed.

  Neil Young

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• I love lyrics. I've always been averse to the straight lyric idea. I guess a big part of it is, that songs that are literary always turn me off. Because they feel so abstract. Like a song. What is a song? We have to remember what the function of a concert and the function of playing a song for people are. It's all become really abstracted.

  Ian Svenonius

  Song, Ideas, People

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• Often kids in a computer lab learn about word-processing, but if they want to write an essay, they write it by hand. This is exactly the opposite of what you want them to learn. They're approaching the computer as just another abstract school subject.

  Seymour Papert

  Writing, School, Kids

  "Sunday Interview - Seymour Papert/ Computers in the Lives of Our Children/ an Mit Mathematician and Philosopher Is Exploring How Technology Can Educate the Next Generation - and Their Parents". www.sfgate.com. February 2, 1997.

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• I think there are plenty of men out there who are capable and accomplished in their own realm. You don't have to be in the same field. I've often been asked, "Didn't you want to get married?" And of course I wanted to get married, but you have to fall in love and want to marry a particular person. You don't get married in the abstract. So, although there were people I felt I might have married, it just never happened.

  Condoleezza Rice

  Falling In Love, Men, Thinking

  Source: aalbc.com

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• Psychologically, the teaching of abstractions first is wrong. Indeed, a thorough understanding of the concrete must precede the abstract.

  Morris Kline

  Teaching, Thorough Understanding, Firsts

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• If somebody asks me about the themes of something I'm working on, I never have any idea what the themes are. . . . Somebody tells me the themes later. I sort of try to avoid developing themes. I want to just keep it a little bit more abstract. But then, what ends up happening is, they say, 'Well, I see a lot here that you did before, and it's connected to this other movie you did,' and . . . that almost seems like something I don't quite choose. It chooses me.

  Wes Anderson

  Ideas, Trying, Want

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• The trouble with us is that we expect too much from the great happenings, the unusual things, and we overlook the common flowers on the path of life, from which we might abstract sweets, comforts, delights.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Sweet, Flower, Unusual Things

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• What flows into you from myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level.

  C. S. Lewis

  Father, Reality, Levels

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• An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Art, Men

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.14, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• As far as Marx's analysis of capitalism, there's a lot of very useful ideas in it, but he's developing an abstract model of 19th century capitalism. It's abstract and it's changed.

  Noam Chomsky

  Ideas, Analysis, Century

  "Chomsky: "The Business Elites ... Are Instinctive Marxists"". Interview with Keane Bhatt, www.truth-out.org. November 19, 2010.

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• I think, basically, I'm an abstract artist. I just think that that's not even an issue. I think everything's abstract.

  Julian Schnabel

  Artist, Thinking, Issues

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I can't actually explain why my lines got shorter, but they did. Just as I can't explain why my early poems were 'all image' and my current ones are relatively abstract. The sense of the line changed with the theme, somehow my ear (or brain or heart/mind) fell in love with a short line and very very simple words.

  Gregory Orr

  Heart, Simple, Mind

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Poetry, for example, goes so deeply into the space between corporeal affect and deep emotion (even primal in some cases) that, as Emily Dickinson said, it can blow the top of your head off. Poetic language is sometimes misunderstood as "abstract" when in reality, it's precise - precisely the language of emotions and the body.

  Lidia Yuknavitch

  Reality, Blow, Space

  Source: therumpus.net

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• As with most of my work, I started from the abstract, from research, building an intellectual model that slowly became internalized when the characters came alive. It's fascinating what happens to the model you've so assiduously assembled when characters are allowed to run rampant: things you thought essential are broken and other things are vastly improved.

  Lauren Groff

  Running, Character, Broken

  Interview with Jason Skipper, therumpus.net. August 24, 2012.

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• Everything you do is political, even if it's abstract. You're making a political statement even if it's unwittingly.

  Eric Drooker

  Political, Ifs, Statements

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Writing is still a bit of a miracle - the whole process: I see the world, filter the world, write down abstract squiggles on a page which somebody is then able to connect with. I'm still amazed by it and think I always will be.

  Rebecca Miller

  Writing, Thinking, Miracle

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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