Concrete Quotes - Page 6

• I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Life, Book, Writing

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.8, Beacon Press

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• I think architecture could be understood as the construction of realities, or the construction of worlds. One of the reasons why architects are often attracted to philosophers, partially, has to do with making sense of the world around us as well as the making of worlds, and in our case, the realities we create can be as real as concrete. These kinds of ideas, of wild imagination, go into the question of how you make a world.

  Jimenez Lai

  Real, Thinking, Imagination

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Our brains are too slow to register that every concrete object is winking in and out of existence at the quantum level thousands of times per second.

  Deepak Chopra

  Brain, Levels, Quantum

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• ...I don't have concrete plans for the future. I just think of success and keep a successful attitude. Success is 99 percent preparation. If you set yourself up for winning, rarely will you fail.

  Peter James

  Success, Attitude, Thinking

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• Why do you love the woman you're in love with? Because she is. And that, after all, is God's own definition of Himself; I am that I am. The girl is who she is. Some of her isness spills over and impregnates the entire universe. Objects and events cease to be mere representations of classes and become their own uniqueness; cease to be illustrations of verbal abstractions and become fully concrete. Then you stop being in love, and the universe collapses, with an almost audible squeak of derision, into its normal insignificance.

  Aldous Huxley

  Girl, Being In Love, Illustration

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• The most sympathetic of men never fully comprehend woman's concrete situation.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Men, Sympathetic, Situation

  Simone de Beauvoir (1963). “Nature of the second sex”

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• To love God and neighbor is not something abstract, but profoundly concrete: it means seeing in every person and face of the Lord to be served, to serve him concretely. And you are, dear brothers and sisters, in the face of Jesus.

  Pope Francis

  Jesus, Brother, Mean

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• That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

  Oscar Wilde

  Philosophy, Real, Soul

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.365, University of Chicago Press

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• Faced with the widespread destruction of the environment, people everywhere are coming to understand that we cannot continue to use the goods of the earth as we have in the past ... [A] new ecological awareness is beginning to emerge which rather than being downplayed, ought to be encouraged to develop into concrete programs and initiatives.

  Pope John Paul II

  Past, People, Use

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• If we consider what science already has enabled men to know-the immensity of space, the fantastic philosophy of the stars, the infinite smallness of the composition of atoms, the macrocosm whereby we succeed only in creating outlines and translating a measure into numbers without our minds being able to form any concrete idea of it-we remain astounded by the enormous machinery of the universe.

  Guglielmo Marconi

  Success, Stars, Philosophy

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• The word "people" is unpleasant to me. The phrase "Soviet people" was drummed into us from childhood on. I love concrete people, enlightened people who live conscious lives and do not simply sit there and vegetate. To love the people you have to be the general secretary of the Communist Party or an absolute dictator.

  Vladimir Sorokin

  Party, People, Childhood

  "Russia Is Slipping Back into an Authoritarian Empire". Interview with Martin Doerry and Matthias Schepp, www.spiegel.de. February 2, 2007.

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• Welfare programs as instruments of manipulation ultimately serve the end of conquest. They act as an anesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of their problems and from the concrete solutions of these problems.

  Paulo Freire

  Welfare Programs, Manipulation, Causes

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.109, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• I had no idea how Stevenson's cases would hold up under close scrutiny. But given what was at stake - nothing less than possible concrete evidence of life after death - weren't they at least worth a visit?

  Tom Shroder

  Ideas, Atheism, Life After Death

  Tom Shroder (1999). “Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

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• being a member of the court is a lot like walking through fresh concrete. Do you remember doing that as a child and leaving a footprint and it hardens after you? I'm afraid that's what we do and we look back and we see those opinions we've written and they've sort of hardened after us.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Children, Law, Leaving

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• Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete.

  Dana Spiotta

  Memories, Childhood, Emotion

  "Live Chat with Dana Spiotta". Interview with Macy Halford, www.newyorker.com. August 23, 2011.

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• The transformation of forests into deserts, fertile earth into sunbaked concrete, and running rivers into silted floodwaters show that only through care for the environment can the livelihoods of those most dependent on it be sustained. We cannot allow economic and environmental concerns to be played off against each other.

  Petra Kelly

  Running, Rivers, Environmental

  Petra Karin Kelly (1994). “Thinking green!: essays on environmentalism, feminism, and nonviolence”, Parallax Pr

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• History has shown that there are very few mechanisms as effective at maintaining the status quo as a set of institutionalized regulations. Once set in regulatory concrete, reconsideration of the basic underlying assumptions is very difficult. While it will be an uphill fight to re-examine the basic underlying assumptions of any law or administrative rule, it is clearly not impossible. It will just take longer than if not so well institutionalized.

  Paul Baran

  Fighting, Maintaining The Status Quo, Law

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• If you throw seeds on concrete, they won't grow. They have to meet fertile soil. So it is with germs. Even if they do get into your body, unless it is nice and acidic, they can't grow and multiply and make you sick - or kill you.

  Robert O. Young

  Nice, Sick, Body

  Robert O. Young, Shelley Redford Young (2008). “The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health”, p.28, Hachette UK

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• The beauty of word processing, God bless my word processor, is that it keeps the plotting very fluid. The prose becomes like a liquid that you can manipulate at will. In the old days, when I typed, every piece of typing paper was like cast in concrete.

  Sue Grafton

  Pieces, Paper, Liquid

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• We know the surrealist solution: concrete irrationality, objective risk. Poetry is the conquest, the only possible conquest, of the 'supreme position', 'a certain position of the mind from where life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future... cease to be perceived in a contradictory sense.'

  Albert Camus

  Real, Past, Life And Death

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.97, Vintage

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• Life is rich, always changing, always challenging, and we architects have the task of transmitting into wood, concrete, glass and steel, of transforming human aspirations into habitable and meaningful space.

  Arthur Erickson

  Meaningful, Glasses, Space

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• Let woman's claim be as broad in the concrete as the abstract. We take our stand on the solidarity of humanity, the oneness of life, and the unnaturalness and injustice of all special favoritism, whether of sex, race, country, or condition. If one link of the chain is broken, the chain is broken.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Country, Sex, Race

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• The Humbling is not vintage Roth, despite its compelling premise. The bizarre series of episodes -- mostly sexual encounters with women -- which make up this short novel don't play to Roth's strengths. (...) The Humbling disappoints because it avoids these universal implications, and veers off into a baroque world of the unique and fantastic, never quite deigning to make its world concrete or to give its characters the honour of an independent will.

  Philip Hensher

  Character, Independent, Unique

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• There is no such thing as abstract Marxism, only concrete Marxism... The Sinofication of Marxism - that is, making certain that its manifestation is imbued with Chinese peculiarities - is a problem that must be understood and solved by the party without delay.

  Mao Zedong

  Party, Chinese, Delay

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• This is our dilemma--either to taste and not to know or to know and not to taste--or, more strictly, to lack one kind of knowledge because we are in an experience or to lack another kind because we are outside it. [. . .] Of this tragic dilemma myth is the partial solution. In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.

  C. S. Lewis

  Taste, Kind, Tragic

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