Concrete Quotes - Page 29

• Commies love concrete.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  P.J. O'Rourke (2012). “Holidays in Hell”, p.71, Atlantic Books Ltd

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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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• Every design is a rigorous attempt to capture a concrete moment of a transitory image in all its nuances. The extent to which this transitory quality is captured, is reflected in the designs: the more precise they are, the more vulnerable.

  Alvaro Siza Vieira

  Design, Quality, Nuance

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• If you encounter a human shadow burned permanently into the concrete in Hiroshima, you realize that this is the trace of a very ordinary person now elevated into the emblematic. Time, shame, complicity, or discomfort are the only things that make us pretend History is impersonal or far removed from the power and consequences of our every lived moment.

  Chris Abani

  Shadow, Encounters, Ordinary

  RUMPUS INTERVIEW with Peter Orner, therumpus.net. February 10, 2014.

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• Everyday you have to fight so that love for humanity can be transformed into concrete deeds, into acts that set an example, that mobilize.

  Che Guevara

  Fighting, Humanity, Everyday

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• Though determinants and matrices received a great deal of attention in the nineteenth century and thousands of papers were written on these subjects, they do not constitute great innovations in mathematics.... Neither determinants nor matrices have influenced deeply the course of mathematics despite their utility as compact expressions and despite the suggestiveness of matrices as concrete groups for the discernment of general theorems of group theory.

  Morris Kline

  Expression, Innovation, Groups

  Morris Kline (1990). “Mathematical Thought From Ancient to Modern Times”, p.795, Oxford University Press

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• I think that being an editor, someone who works with words, is very good training for being a translator because it trains you to be attentive to words in a very specific, very concrete, very literal way.

  Ann Goldstein

  Thinking, Editors, Training

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Mother is in herself a concrete denial of the idea of sexual pleasure since her sexuality has been placed at the service of reproductive function alone. She is the perpetually violated passive principle; her autonomy has been sufficiently eroded by the presence within her of the embryo she brought to term. Her unthinking ability to reproduce, which is her pride, is, since it is beyond choice, not a specific virtue of her own.

  Angela Carter

  Mother, Pride, Ideas

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• It's a mystical quality of music, that music isn't really concrete, and it's communicating abstractions about imaginary worlds. At least, my music's like that. It's not real. It's unreal, it's all fabrication. To write a song about Obama would suddenly break the spell.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Song, Real, Writing

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I think I'd rather win, for example, a Writer's Guild award than almost anything on earth. And the few nominations I've had with the guild, and the few awards I've had, represented to me a far more legitimate concrete achievement than anything.

  Rod Serling

  Thinking, Winning, Awards

  Source: www.rodserling.com

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• When I was in my early twenties I was doing tenant organizing - rent strikes, specifically - in my building. I think that was how I started doing poster art. It was something very concrete.

  Eric Drooker

  Art, Thinking, Twenties

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• So with science, it's original idea was to ignore the spiritual or nebulous side of reality and to strictly work on concrete things. Say there's a brick which we cut it in half and then see there's two half's of a brick. If we keep cutting we can then see there's particles and so on and so forth.

  Brad Warner

  Spiritual, Cutting, Reality

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• You know what girls are like. They turn twenty or twenty-one and all of a sudden they start having these concrete ideas. They get super realistic. And when that happens, everything that seemed so sweet and lovable about them begins to look ordinary and depressing.

  Haruki Murakami

  Girl, Sweet, Depressing

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• Under chattel slavery and feudalism, exploitation was concrete and personalized in the producer's relationship with his master. The slave and peasant knew exactly who was screwing them. The modern worker, on the other hand, feels a pounding sensation, but has only a vague idea where it is coming from.

  Kevin Carson

  Hands, Ideas, Slavery

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• Can space break? I mean the space of art galleries. Over the past 100 years, art galleries have gone from looking like Beaux Arts salons to simple storefronts to industrial lofts to the gleaming giant white cubes of Chelsea with their shiny concrete floors.

  Jerry Saltz

  Art, Mean, Past

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• Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God.

  Henri Nouwen

  Prayer, Home, Way

  Henri Nouwen (2013). “Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity, and Ecstasy in Christian Perspective”, p.27, Image

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• Indeed, the human mind appeared to suffer from a crippling need to fabricate in the absence of concrete proof.

  J.R. Ward

  Mind, Suffering, Needs

  J.R. Ward (2010). “Lover Mine: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.281, Penguin

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• If you said to me, 'Lie down on that concrete floor and fall asleep,' I could do it. I can sleep anywhere at any time of day on any surface.

  Kevin McCloud

  Lying, Fall, Sleep

  "Kevin McCloud: 'I'm terrified of being poor, I always have been'" by Rachel Concornan, www.mirror.co.uk. April 26, 2015.

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• ‎Perfect? How can you define a word without concrete meaning?

  Ellen Hopkins

  Perfect, Incomparable

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• I believe that my observations have always led me to find that the so-called realist moves about the world with a closed mind, ringed as it were with concrete and cement, and that the so-called romantic is like an unfenced garden in and out of which truth can wander at will.

  Joseph Roth

  Believe, Moving, Garden

  Joseph Roth (2002). “The Emperor's Tomb”, p.47, The Overlook Press

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• As Val jumped down onto the litter-strewn concrete after them, she thought how insane it was to follow two people she didn't know into the bowels of the subway, but instead of being afraid, she felt glad. She would make all her own decisions now, even if they were ruinous ones. It was the same pleasurable feeling as tearing a piece of paper into tiny, tiny pieces.

  Holly Black

  Two, People, Decision

  Holly Black (2012). “Valiant”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• That really was NOT fun, though. Well, the hitting-her-with-a-stick part, that was fun. But crashing into a concrete bear? NOT fun.

  Rick Riordan

  Fun, Hitting, Bears

  Rick Riordan (2006). “The lightning thief”

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• I like using concrete imagery, but I don't feel that's what it's about. It's a combination of concrete and abstract to take the listener somewhere they know better than you. That's true for music, seeing a painting, watching a movie... it's all some kind of an escape.

  M. Ward

  Writing, Kind, Painting

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• There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Mean, Names, Rivers

  Ernest Hemingway (2016). “A Farewell to Arms”, p.109, Hamilton Books

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• If you are anxious, you can't learn. It's like dropping seeds on concrete. With a quiet mind, people take things in.

  Herbert Benson

  Inspirational, People, Mind

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