Concepts Quotes - Page 20

• The chief contribution of such a radically new and more powerful instrument would be, not to supplement our present ideas of the universe we live in, but rather to uncover new phenomena not yet imagined, and perhaps modify profoundly our basic concepts of space and time.

  Lyman Spitzer

  Powerful, Ideas, Space

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• Modern man, if he dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world, showing new things and gadgets, and himself having plenty of money with which to buy them.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Heaven, Vision

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Sane Society Ils 252”, p.135, Routledge

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• I have a concept of Naples that is not so much of a city, per se, but rather an ingredient of the human spirit that I detect in everyone, Neapolitan or not. The idea that 'Neapolitanism' and mass ignorance are somehow indissolubly linked is one that I am prepared to fight with all the strength I have.

  Luciano De Crescenzo

  Ignorance, Fighting, Cities

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• A seed is really something spiritual as much as it is something material. It contains a life spark that allows the regenerative process to happen. We need seeds because they are the physical manifestation of that concept that we call hope.

  Gary Paul Nabhan

  Spiritual, Needs, Sparks

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• When I first started making music, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just wanted to write songs. I didn't have a concept. I didn't think it through. I was just flailing around doing what comes naturally. It took me a really long time to step back and deal with what I was doing with any kind of perspective or self-awareness.

  Juliana Hatfield

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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• When I start writing, I'll have a vague concept or I'll just have a title, and the song just goes on its own direction. Usually it goes in many directions within each song. They get really convoluted sometimes.

  Juliana Hatfield

  Song, Writing, Titles

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• How important the concept of God is, and how instead of valuing what has been given us, we with light hearts spurn it because of absurdities that have been attached to it.

  Leo Tolstoy

  God, Heart, Light

  Leo Tolstoy (graf), Leon Stilman (1979). “Last diaries”, Ayer Co Pub

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• That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Motorcycle, Steel, Bikers

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive — a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society — a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself.... The purpose of man's life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Zombie, Doe

  "The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z".

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• Like it or not the American people support the term 'background check,' they support the concept of it even though they know it won't work to keep guns out of the hands of criminals they figure 'well if criminals aren't supposed to have guns what's the big deal about a background check,'

  Alan Gottlieb

  Gun, Hands, People

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• It’s notable that the countries that most pride themselves on their commitment to equality, human rights, and democracy (like the United States and the western European countries) are precisely those that, in the late twentieth century, invented a new status (‘illegal’) in order to deprive some of their residents of access to equality, human rights, and democracy.I am honored to lend my name to PICUM’s campaign to end the use of the term ‘illegal’ and to challenge the whole concept of illegality as a status.

  Aviva Chomsky

  Country, Commitment, Pride

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• In early historical civilization, lunar symbols wove together three major metaphorical concepts. The first is the idea of fertility. The moon controls the tides of both water and blood – the sacred fluids of the early religions. The second is the concept of periodic rebirth, symbolized by the moon’s monthly waning and renewal. The third is the notion of continually repeating cycles of change.

  Layne Redmond

  Moon, Blood, Civilization

  Layne Redmond (1997). “When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm”

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• The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Christian, Lying, Essence

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• Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th.

  Roy Blount, Jr.

  Thanksgiving, Children, Santa

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• New ideas are one of the most overrated concepts of our time. Most of the important ideas that we live with aren't new at all.

  Andy Rooney

  Ideas, Important, Overrated

  Andrew A. Rooney (2010). “Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit”, p.106, PublicAffairs

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• Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has really changed is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to the intellectual expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-medical jargon that parodies the concepts of science. The social style conforms to the political expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-liberal social movement that parodies the ideals of freedom and rationality.

  Thomas Szasz

  Vocabulary, Expectations, Political

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1997). “The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement”, p.27, Syracuse University Press

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• I believe that the first step in the setting of a real external world is the formation of the concept of bodily objects and of bodily objects of various kinds.

  Albert Einstein

  Real, Believe, World

  Albert Einstein, Stephen W. Hawking (2007). “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein”, p.402, Running Press

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• It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting them, which gives us the key to the understanding of nature ... In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.

  Albert Einstein

  Reality, Keys, Law

  "On the Method of Theoretical Physics". Lecture at the University of Oxford (1933), as quoted in Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 63., p. 237, 1990.

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• The concept of neutrality can lead to a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it.

  Arthur Goldberg

  Religious, Neutrality, Constitution

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• The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.

  James A. Baldwin

  Past, Men, Black

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• The greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Order, Needs, Relation

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• Unless the concepts of work and play and reward for work change absolutely, women must continue to provide cheap labor, and even more, free labor exacted of right by an employer possessed of a contract for life, made out in his favor.

  Germaine Greer

  Work, Play, Favors

  Germaine Greer (2009). “The Female Eunuch”, p.21, Harper Collins

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• All history teaches us that these questions that we think the pressing ones will be transmuted before they are answered, that they will be replaced by others, and that the very process of discovery will shatter the concepts that we today use to describe our puzzlement.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Thinking, Discovery, Progress

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2013). “Uncommon Sense”, p.80, Springer Science & Business Media

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• I remember my oldest son, Steve, saying to me once, 'I don't ever remember seeing you with an apron on.' And I thought, that's right, honey, you did not. That was his concept of what a mother should be.

  Lauren Bacall

  Mother, Son, Honey

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• I couldn't imagine a day without music. It relaxes and stimulates me in equal measure and I hate the sound of silence - the concept, I mean, not the track by Simon and Garfunkel.

  Charles Kennedy

  Hate, Mean, Track

  "Charles Kennedy" by Will Hodgkinson, www.theguardian.com. April 14, 2005.

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