Abstract Quotes - Page 5

• Even the recognition of an individual whom we see every day is only possible as the result of an abstract idea of him formed by generalization from his appearances in the past.

  James G. Frazer

  Past, Ideas, Recognition

  "Complexity and the Arrow of Time". Book by Charles H. Lineweaver, Paul C. W. Davies, and Michael Ruse, p. 243, 2013.

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• Let me first say that I don't think the millennium target of cutting global poverty in half is an impossible or abstract target. I think it is a real and achievable goal.

  Gro Harlem Brundtland

  Real, Cutting, Thinking

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• Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.

  Leo Ornstein

  Art, Art Music, Music Is

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• I am at war... with the principal personage of traditional philosophy, that abstract subject who masquerades as everyone and anyone, but is really a male subject in disguise.

  Pam Gems

  Philosophy, War, Males

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• I get satisfaction out of seeing stuff that makes real change in the real world. We need a lot more of that and a lot less abstract stuff.

  Temple Grandin

  Real, Needs, World

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• The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  War, President, Principles

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• I paint; I draw and paint - I've been doing that since I was in third grade, drawing realistically and then changing to abstract art. That was my first creative thing before guitar or comedy.

  Steven Wright

  Art, Guitar, Drawing

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• Science only means knowledge; and for [Greek] ancients it did only mean knowledge. Thus the favorite science of the Greeks was Astronomy, because it was as abstract as Algebra. ... We may say that the great Greek ideal was to have no use for useful things. The Slave was he who learned useful things; the Freeman was he who learned useless things. This still remains the ideal of many noble men of science, in the sense they do desire truth as the great Greeks desired it; and their attitude is an external protest against vulgarity of utilitarianism.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Attitude, Learning, Mean

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• The world is very complicated and it is clearly impossible for the human mind to understand it completely. Man has therefore devised an artifice which permits the complicated nature of the world to be blamed on something which is called accidental and thus permits him to abstract a domain in which simple laws can be found.

  Eugene Wigner

  Nature, Science, Simple

  Eugene Paul Wigner (2012). “Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses”, p.283, Springer Science & Business Media

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• There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world.

  Nikolai Lobachevsky

  Real, Math, Science

  "The Foundations of Geometry and the Non-Euclidean Plane". Book by George Edward Martin, 1975.

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• If the world would only build temples to Machinery in the abstract then everything would be perfect. The painter and sculptor would have plenty to do, and could, in complete peace and suitably honored, pursue their trade without further trouble.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Peace, Perfect, Would Be

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• My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that way. I can see of course that, in the abstract, thinking and all activity is rather desperate.

  Willem de Kooning

  Lying, Thinking, Way

  Willem De Kooning (1979). “Willem de Kooning: Pittsburgh International Series, October 26, 1979-January 6, 1980, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute”

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• For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents - as an element - the greatest difficulty in manipulation.

  Sergei Eisenstein

  Color, Example, Cinema

  Sergei Eisenstein (2014). “Film Form: Essays in Film Theory”, p.78, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey. 'That's different. For a monkey, it's terrific'.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Age, Abstract Painting, Negative

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• The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions...The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception.

  Leon Trotsky

  Philosophy, Mistake, Class

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• Is not art a tool we employ to peel the kitsch off life? Layer by layer art strips life bare. The more abstract it gets, the more transparent the air is. Can it be that the farther it is removed from life, the clearer art becomes?

  Robert Musil

  Art, Air, Tools

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• Change means movement. Movement means friction.

  Saul Alinsky

  Change, Mean, Vacuums

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Reveille for Radicals”, p.224, Vintage

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• Music is an essential part of everything we do. Like puppetry, music has an abstract quality which speaks to a worldwide audience in a wonderful way that nourishes the soul.

  Jim Henson

  Soul, Quality, Essentials

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• Touring was an abstract idea for me in the beginning. I didn't know where it was going to take me, but I knew that I wanted to go and play for lots of people. I always had that image in my mind. I had no idea what the touring experience was like, and how it was going to unfold, but I knew that I wanted to tour. Then it just started happening slowly started happening.

  Justin Nozuka

  People, Mind

  Source: mousertime.blogspot.com

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• My own terror of appearing sentimental is so strong that I’ve decided to fight against it, some; but the terror is still there. . . . Do you identify with a distaste/fear about sentimentality? Do you agree that, past a certain line, such distaste can turn everything arch and sneering and too ironic? Or do you have your own set of abstract questions to drive yourself nuts with?

  David Foster Wallace

  Strong, Fighting, Past

  "David Foster Wallace" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. September 29, 2008.

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• Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.

  Marcel Proust

  Art, Lying, Passion

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: Time Regained (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.300, Modern Library

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• Commitment is a word invented in our abstract modernity to signify the absence of any real motives in the soul for moral dedication.

  Allan Bloom

  Real, Commitment, Dedication

  Allan Bloom (1988). “Closing of the American Mind”, Simon & Schuster

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• He'll be delivered from madness. What then? He'll feel himself acceptable! What then? Do you think feelings like his can be simply re-attached, like plasters? Stuck on to other objects we select? Look at him! ... My desire might be to make this boy an ardent husband - a caring citizen - a worshipper of abstract and unifying God. My achievement, however, is more likely to make a ghost!

  Peter Shaffer

  Husband, Caring, Boys

  "Equus". Book by Peter Shaffer, 1973.

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• In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today’s physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Spiritual, Philosophical, Mean

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• Children in the abstract, had never appealed to me. They seemed to be loud creatures, often dripping some form of goo.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Children, Form, Loud

  Stephenie Meyer (2009). “Breaking Dawn: Twilight”, p.82, Hachette UK

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