Concrete Quotes - Page 25

• We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete.

  Ross Macdonald

  Broken, Wish, Locks

  Ross Macdonald (1967). “Archer in Hollywood: three exciting novels: The moving target, The way some people die [and] The barbarous coast”

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• The women of today are in a fair way to dethrone the myth of femininity; they are beginning to affirm their independence in concrete ways; but they do not easily succeed in living completely the life of a human being.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Women, Independence, Today

  Simone de Beauvoir (1953). “The second sex”, Vintage

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• One of the most serious [challenges] is increased military spending and the cost of maintaining and developing nuclear arsenals. Enormous resources are being consumed for these purposes, when they could be spent on the development of peoples, especially those who are poorest. For this reason I firmly hope that, during the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference to be held this May in New York, concrete decisions will be made towards progressive disarmament, with a view to freeing our planet from nuclear arms

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Religious, New York, Military

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• Woods and forests have been essentialt to the imagination of these islands, and of countries throughout the world, for centuries. It is for this reason that when woods are felled, when they are suppressed by tarmac and concrete and asphalt, it is not only unique species and habitats that disappear, but also unique memories, unique forms of thought.

  Robert Macfarlane

  Country, Memories, Unique

  Robert Macfarlane (2008). “The Wild Places”, p.69, Penguin

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• As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in his own apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity-'teleological activity.' He is an agent seeking in every act the accomplishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By force of being such an agent, he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile effort.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Men, Effort, Agents

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THORSTEIN VEBLEN Ultimate Collection: 8 Books & 50+ Business Essays and Articles in Warfare and Economics: The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Theory of Business Enterprise, The Higher Learning In America, Panem et Circenses, The Vested Interests and the Common Man, The Use of Loan Credit in Business…”, p.16, e-artnow

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• Literature expresses itself by abstractions, whereas painting, by means of drawing and colour, gives concrete shape to sensations and perceptions.

  Paul Cezanne

  Mean, Drawing, Giving

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• The major concrete achievement of the women's movement of the 1970's was the Dutch treat.

  Nora Ephron

  Achievement, Movement, Dutch

  Nora Ephron (2011). “Heartburn”, p.81, Vintage

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• From the point of view of art, there are no concrete or abstract forms, but only forms which are more or less convincing lies.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Lying, Views

  Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery (1975). “Picasso, Braque, Léger: masterpieces from Swiss collections”

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• To make a concrete response to the appeal of our brothers and sisters in humanity, we must come to grips with the first of these challenges: solidarity among generations, solidarity between countries and entire continents, so that all human beings may share more equitably in the riches of our planet. This is one of the essential services that people of good will must render to humanity. The earth, in fact, can produce enough to nourish all its inhabitants, on the condition that the rich countries do not keep for themselves what belongs to all.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Country, Brother, Rich Countries

  Pope Benedict XVI's Address At The Presentation Of The Letters Accrediting New Ambassadors To The Holy See, w2.vatican.va. June 16, 2005.

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• Concrete is heavy; iron is hard - but the grass will prevail.

  Edward Abbey

  Strength, Nature, Iron

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.48, RosettaBooks

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• We must walk rapidly but not run. We must not be opportunists, nor allow our enthusiasms to make us lose the vision of concrete reality.

  Amilcar Cabral

  Running, Reality, Vision

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• Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.

  William James

  Reality, Frustration, Ideas

  William James (2007). “Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking”, p.128, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• Concrete is momentarily unformed matter seeking its natural completion, filling in the last corners of its allowed space, finding a form. It is possibility rendered material, hope in an industrial-strength mixer.

  Mark Kingwell

  Space, Filling In, Matter

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• I think that everyone who is going to really move up has got to go through some trauma...I'm much more respected in my new job, than I was as the head of the Warner Group, because I survived being thrown out the window, going splat on the concrete, and walking.

  Doug Morris

  Jobs, Moving, Thinking

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• A painting or sculpture not modelled on any real object is every bit as concrete and sensuous as a leaf or a stone... but it is an incomplete art which privileges the intellect to the detriment of the senses.

  Hans Arp

  Art, Real, Sculpture

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• Thoughts, words, ideas and information, free from any bonds or restrictions, is the very concrete which pours out a foundation strong enough that upon which a house, stable and lasting, of true freedom and liberty may be built.

  Derek R. Audette

  Strong, Ideas, House

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• How badly I want that nameless thing! First there must be an idea, a feeling... Maybe it was an abstract idea that you've got to find a symbol for, or maybe it was a concrete form that you have to simplify or distort to meet your ends, but that starting point must pervade the whole.

  Emily Carr

  Ideas, Feelings, Desire

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• Trying to describe the process of becoming an alcoholic is like trying to describe air. It's too big and mysterious and pervasive to be defined. Alcohol is everywhere in your life, omnipresent, and you're both aware and unaware of it almost all the time, all you know is you'd die without it, and there is no simple reason why this happens, no single moment, no physiological event that pushes a heavy drinker across a concrete line into alcoholism. It's a slow, gradual, insidious, elusive becoming.

  Caroline Knapp

  Single Mom, Simple, Air

  Caroline Knapp (1999). “Drinking: A Love Story”, p.8, Dial Press

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• Today's concrete-pouring ceremony of Chashma-2 marks yet another landmark in Pak-China relations and a milestone in the history of nuclear technology in Pakistan.

  Shaukat Aziz

  Technology, Nuclear, Pakistan

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• Anyone who lives in a city will know the feeling of having been there too long. The gorge-vision that the streets imprint on us, the sense of blockage, the longing for surfaces other than glass, brick, concrete and tarmac....I have lived in Cambridge on and off for a decade, and I imagine I will continue to do so for years to come. And for as long as I stay here, I know I will have to also get to the wild places.

  Robert Macfarlane

  Years, Cities, Wild Places

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• Word is murder of a thing, not only in the elementary sense of implying its absence - by naming a thing, we treat it as absent, as dead, although it is still present - but above all in the sense of its radical dissection: the word 'quarters' the thing, it tears it out of the embedment in its concrete context, it treats its component parts as entities with an autonomous existence: we speak about color, form, shape, etc., as if they possessed self-sufficient being.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Self, Color, Tears

  Slavoj Žižek (2001). “Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out”, p.51, Psychology Press

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• LEGO has essentially taken the concrete block, the building block of the world, and made it into the building block of our imagination.

  Ayah Bdeir

  Block, Taken, Creativity

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• Let's stick to the practical and the concrete: Would you like it if people lived in a virtual world? If machines were smarter than people? If, in the future, people, animals and plants were products of technology? If you don't like these ideas, then for you the computer and biological sciences clearly are dangerous.

  Theodore Kaczynski

  Animal, Technology, Ideas

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• Humans are animals and like all animals we leave tracks as we walk: signs of passage made in snow, sand, mud, grass, dew, earth or moss.... We easily forget that we are track-markers, through, because most of our journeys now occur on asphalt and concrete--and these are substances not easily impressed.

  Robert Macfarlane

  Animal, Journey, Snow

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• The only system which is truly secure is one which is switched off and unplugged, locked in a titanium lined safe, buried in a concrete bunker, and is surrounded by nerve gas and very highly paid armed guards. Even then, I wouldn't stake my life on it.

  Gene Spafford

  Nerves, Safe, Bunkers

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