Abstract Quotes - Page 40

• That is my morality or my metaphysics or me myself: a passer-by in everything, even my own soul. I belong to nothing, I desire nothing, I am nothing except an abstract centre of impersonal sensations, a sentient mirror fallen from the wall but still turned to reflect the diversity of the world.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Wall, Mirrors, Diversity

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• The abstract intelligence produces a fatigue that's the worst of all fatigues. It doesn't weigh on us like bodily fatigue, nor disconcert like the fatigue of emotional experience. It's the weight of our consciousness of the world, a shortness of breath in our soul.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Emotional, Soul, World

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• Nothing in these abstract economic models actually works in the real world. It doesn't matter how many footnotes they put in, or how many ways they tinker around the edges. The whole enterprise is totally rotten at the core: it has no relation to reality.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, Economic Models, Rotten

  "Understanding Power". Book by Noam Chomsky, 2002.

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• Every abstract picture of the world is as impossible as a blueprint of a storm. Don't be ashamed because you're human: be proud! Inside you, vaults behind vaults open endlessly. You will never be finished, and that's as it should be.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Storm, World, Proud

  "Swedish Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer dies aged 83" by Andrew Brown, www.theguardian.com. March 27, 2015.

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• I'm not an abstract artist; I leave that to others. To me, abstract art ended with Kazimir Malevich's 'Black Square.' To continue it is senseless.

  Jonas Mekas

  Art, Squares, Black

  "Jonas Mekas captures one moment at a time". Interview with Molly Glentzer, www.chron.com. November 15, 2013.

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• As Enlightenment philosophers and scholars consciously adopted the methods of science to establish such abstract concepts as rights, liberty, and justice, successive generations have become schooled in thinking of these abstractions as applied to others in matrices-like mental rotations.

  Michael Shermer

  Thinking, Rights, Justice

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• Among those born into chaos, some will imagine an order and become scientists; a few will recognize the chaos and become abstract artists; most others will turn to faith for understanding; and the rest will become lost souls.

  Robert Breault

  Artist, Order, Understanding

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• It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.

  William Butler Yeats

  Plato, Eye, Imagination

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.418, Hayes Barton Press

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• I can never fathom it when people say things like "I can't understand abstract art!" Or: "Abstract art is junk!" Or: "Abstract art isn't as valid as realism!"

  Derek R. Audette

  Art, Reality, People

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• In every landscape should reside jewels of abstract art waiting to be discovered.

  Melissa Brown

  Art, Jewels, Waiting

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• The notion that a society could be regulated entirely by market forces is a utopian fantasy: an impossible dream generated by imagining what the world would be like if everyone's behavior was utterly consistent with some abstract moral ideal-in this case, economic theories that assume all human action is based on calculating, systematic, (but scrupulously law-abiding), greed.

  David Graeber

  Dream, Law, Greed

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• Abstract knowledge is not enough. At the end of the day, it's about how one reacts to circumstances in an extreme real-time situation.

  Boaz Lavie

  Real, The End Of The Day, Enough

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I like things that reach a little further and are a little more abstract, but I don't think that's what I do naturally well. How I write naturally is probably what's furthest from me, and the most removed from what I understand.

  Ryan Adams

  Writing, Thinking, Littles

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. June 28, 2007.

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• Music is the most abstract of the arts and it expresses the sound of the universe itself. These are the real rhythms that stimulate the artist's mind and guide his hand.

  Robert Genn

  Music, Art, Real

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• An abstract title suggests another value to the subject, perhaps an artistic quality that sets the viewers' sensitivities into action.

  Robert Genn

  Quality, Titles, Action

  Robert Genn (1996). “The Painter's Keys: A Seminar with Robert Genn”, p.144, Studio Beckett Publications

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• Abstract art is a creative interplay between the conscious and the unconscious, with the conscious mind making all the final decisions and in control throughout.

  Lawren Harris

  Art, Creative, Decision

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• There are opposing forces in all living things. My work reflects this and stirs up a contrast of emotions in the viewer... perception versus annoyance. To the viewer who has reached that level of awareness, my work is no longer abstract, but very real.

  Eugene J. Martin

  Real, Perception, Levels

  "In Memoriam - Eugene James Martin". Direct Art Magazine, Vol. 13, p. 86, Fall-Winter 2006.

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• If you seek just a little truth, as most, you should not ignore abstract forms, the basis from which all short-lived experiences we call reality springs.

  Eugene J. Martin

  Art, Spring, Reality

  "In Memoriam - Eugene James Martin". "Direct Art Magazine", Vol. 13, p. 87, Fall-Winter 2006.

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• After being an Impressionist, Cubist, and an Abstract Expressionist, I was influenced by realistic artists, including Andrew Wyeth in the late '50s, and I haven't changed my style since.

  Robert Bateman

  Artist, Style, Realistic

  "Robert Batemen: On home life, health, helping wildlife and his art muse". Interview with Carol Crenna, carolcrenna.wordpress.com. December 15, 2012.

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• If I didn't have a conviction that a serious painter can portray Nature more profoundly than the best colour photography, I'd probably give it all up or go abstract or take up photography.

  E. J. Hughes

  Photography, Giving, Serious

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• I got very interested in people who had discovered something more significant than ... intellectual, abstract understanding.

  Steve Jobs

  People, Understanding, Intellectual

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• My advice to those who which to learn the art of scientific prophesy is not to rely on abstract reason, but to decipher the secret language of Nature from Nature's documents: the facts of experience.

  Max Born

  Art, Advice, Secret

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• People weep at music all the time, because music gives form to some abstract level of integration.

  Joe Bradley

  People, Giving, Levels

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I guess I have no motivation to make an abstract painting, even if they sometimes read as abstract. I think, with abstraction, it's easy to fall into a sort of pastiche.

  Joe Bradley

  Motivation, Fall, Thinking

  Interview with Laura Hoptman, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 16, 2013.

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• I think there are a lot of similarities between writing and music. Music is much more direct and much more emotional and that's the level I want to be at when I'm writing. Writing is much more intellectual and indirect and abstract, in a way.

  Karl Ove Knausgard

  Writing, Emotional, Thinking

  "In Search of Karl Ove Knausgaard". Interview with Jared Levy, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 29, 2015.

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