Abstraction Quotes - Page 13

• Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment.

  Jonathan Nolan

  Matter, Moments, Absurdity

  "Memento Mori". Book by Jonathan Nolan, www.esquire.com. 2000.

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• If a painting contains no abstraction nor impressionistic elements, it is a kite that will never fly. But if the painting completely breaks the connection between human feeling and the object portrayed, the kite string has been broken. I try to keep the line unbroken.

  Wu Guanzhong

  Broken, Feelings, Trying

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• There is an incredibly large spectrum of possible causes for program bugs, including simple typos, "thinkos," hidden limitations of underlying abstractions, and outright bugs in abstractions or their implementation.

  Guido van Rossum

  Simple, Bugs, Causes

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• If people would stop objectifying abstractions (which they probably never will), or if they would stop objectifying the abstractions they make consciously (which they might learn to do), at least half the pseudo-questions befuddling the world today - as they have befuddled it since time immemorial - would vanish. And that would be a very, very great gain.

  Cassius Jackson Keyser

  People, Would Be, Half

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• I do believe abstraction is and was meant to embody deep emotion. I believe that's its job, in the history of art.

  Sean Scully

  Art, Jobs, Believe

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• Life is the path. Can the path be seen? Observe the path and you are far from it. Without observation how can one know they are on the path? The path cannot be seen, nor can it not be unseen. Perception is delusion; abstraction is nonsensical. Your path is freedom. Name it and it vanishes.

  Eric S. Nylund

  Names, Perception, Unseen

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• When a mother comes home with her new baby, she will find her abstractions are all concrete now. 'Freedom' now means being able to take a shower. 'Mobility' means being able to reach the glass of water on the dresser while not breaking the baby's suction on the breast. 'Flexibility' means being able to push the Record function on the VCR without dropping the baby.

  Marni Jackson

  Mother, Baby, Mean

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• Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation - I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances.

  Henri Matisse

  Two, Balance, Three

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• Abstraction means getting away from a visual interpretation but nearer to an emotional one.

  Henry Moore

  Mean, Emotional, Interpretation

  Henry Moore, Alan G. Wilkinson (2002). “Henry Moore-- Writings and Conversations”, p.114, Univ of California Press

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• The pendulum of mathematics swings back and forth towards abstraction and away from it with a timing that remains to be estimated.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Swings, Timing, Mathematics

  Gian-Carlo Rota (2009). “Indiscrete Thoughts”, p.30, Springer Science & Business Media

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• The human brain finds it extremely hard to cope with a new level of abstraction. This is why it was well into the eighteenth century before mathematicians felt comfortable dealing with zero and with negative numbers, and why even today many people cannot accept the square root of minus-one as a genuine number.

  Keith Devlin

  Zero, Roots, Numbers

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• I have been interested in the dialogue of abstraction and modernist painting - and the rich history of the grid. I also think I have been influenced a bit by some of the particular qualities of the Bay Area. The weather and the atmosphere here is so exotic, like the fog rolling in and the nuanced differences in the quality of light.

  Stephen Beal

  Thinking, Light, Fog

  Interview with Jason-Louise Graham, jasonlouise-graham.squarespace.com. Novemeber 19, 2010.

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• The power of understanding symbols, i.e. of regarding everything about a sense-datum as irrelevant except a certain form that it embodies, is the most characteristic mental trait of mankind. It issues in an unconscious, spontaneous process of abstraction, which goes on all the time in the human mind: a process of recognizing the concept in any configuration given to experience, and forming a conception accordingly. That is the real sense of Aristotle's definition of Man as "the rational animal".

  Susanne Katherina Langer

  Real, Animal, Men

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• The world of physics is essentially the real world construed by mathematical abstractions, and the world of sense is the real world construed by the abstractions which the sense-organs immediately furnish. To suppose that the "material mode" is a primitive and groping attempt at physical conception is a fatal error in epistemology.

  Susanne Katherina Langer

  Real, Errors, World

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• If, therefore, man has come into the world to search for God and, if he has found Him, to adhere to Him and to find repose in adhering to Him-man cannot search for Him and attain Him in this sensible and corporeal world, since God is spirit rather than body, and cannot be attained in intellectual abstraction, since one is able to conceive nothing similar to God, as he asserts-how can one, therefore, search for Him in order to find Him?

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Men, Order, Intellectual

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• I think it's more, at least at the time, a sense of abstraction. My mind doesn't really work in a way where there's a definitive sense of something. I go one way and then it opens up into a million different ideas, and somehow, when you look at the art, Buddhist art, or particularly Tibetan art, you know, it's a similar thing. All of a sudden there are a million lotus leaves and you're following one to the next and to another, and I related to that, and it felt simple and easy to me. And it made me feel smart.

  Jake Gyllenhaal

  Art, Buddhist, Thinking

  "10 Years After 'Brokeback,' Jake Gyllenhaal Remembers Heath Ledger: 'Way Beyond His Years as a Human'". Interview with Stephen Galloway, www.hollywoodreporter.com. November 25, 2015.

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• America is a simplified ideological abstraction, an emotive symbol represented by other abstract symbols like the flag. It is the object of a faithlike devotion, unencumbered by honest history.

  Michael Parenti

  America, Flags, Honest

  Michael Parenti (2004). “Superpatriotism”, p.9, City Lights Books

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• Remember that every science is based upon an abstraction. An abstraction is taking a point of view or looking at things under a certain aspect or from a particular angle.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Views, Remember, Angle

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• All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness and opacity. All that is done with life inclines toward knowledge, abstraction, generality transfiguration and transparency.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Effectiveness, Color, Individuality

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• This [terrorists attacks on 9/11] was part of nothing. It was a leap into another realm - the realm of crazy abstractions and mythological generalities, involving people who have hijacked Islam for their own purposes. It's important not to fall into that trap and to try to respond with a metaphysical retaliation of some sort.

  Edward Said

  Crazy, Fall, People

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• The appearance is the allusion of abstraction when in fact I am in control of every aspect of that symmetry.

  Kerry James Marshall

  Facts, Appearance, Aspect

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• If you are going to learn mathematics, you have to learn it not simply as an abstraction but as it is applied. I always say to teachers, for goodness sake, take the kids out first to look at the stars in order to understand infinity.

  Jean Houston

  Teacher, Stars, Kids

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• I don't see those paintings as abstractions, especially because they are emblems of the inkblot. They aren't smashed together; they are constructed shape-by-shape, layer-by-layer, like any other picture.

  Kerry James Marshall

  Together, Shapes, Layers

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another.

  Diane Ackerman

  Home, Heart, Home Is Where The Heart Is

  Diane Ackerman (1999). “Deep Play”, Random House Incorporated

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• Lately I feel films are more and more like music. Music deals with abstractions and, like film, it involves time. It has many different movements, it has much contrast. And through music you learn that, in order to get a particular beautiful feeling, you have to have started far back, arranging certain things in a certain way. You can't just cut to it.

  David Lynch

  Beautiful, Cutting, Order

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