Concrete Quotes - Page 15

• The genius of Man in our time has gone into jet-propulsion, atom-splitting, penicillin-curing, etc. There is none left over for works of imagination; of spiritual insight or mystical enlightenment.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Spiritual, Science, Men

  "The Most of Malcolm Muggeridge".

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• Listen to us rather than to Arkady Mamontov talking about us. Don't twist and distort everything we say. Let us enter into dialogue and contact with the country, which is ours too, not just Putin's and the Patriarch's. Like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that in the end, words will crush concrete. Solzhenitsyn wrote, "the word is more sincere than concrete, so words are not trifles. Once noble people mobilize, their words will crush concrete."

  Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

  Crush, Country, Believe

  "Here's What Russian Punk Band Pussy Riot Said At The Conclusion Of Their Controversial Blasphemy Trial". Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's closing speech at the Pussy Riot trial in Russia, www.businessinsider.com. August 10, 2012.

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• One has to keep in mind the countless human tragedies that played out in these days. Through the middle of a city, where several thousand connections existed daily, despite administrative division, the concrete pillars were driven into the border, which was expanded like a Chinese wall.

  Willy Brandt

  Wall, Cities, Chinese

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• On the stage on which we are observing it, — Universal History — Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Reality, Spirit, Stage

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1861). “Lectures on the Philosophy of History”, p.17

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• Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.

  Walter Pater

  Special, Quality, Useless

  Walter Pater (2013). “The Renaissance”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• I am caught in a terrific bind of characterologically and rationally needing to think in the most comprehensive terms possible, forming a continuous system of argument with a gradient that runs from concrete to abstract, and unfortunately being caught also in a culture in which hardly anyone seems capable of applying himself to understand such a demanding form of argumentation.

  Kenny Smith

  Running, Philosophy, Thinking

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• The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Discovery, Weapons, Facts

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• Avoiding life, avoiding making any concrete plans for your life-that's just one way you're pretending you can keep bad things from happening to you again.

  Susan Vaught

  Fear, Avoiding Life, Way

  Susan Vaught (2011). “Going Underground”, p.184, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• There is nothing like a concrete life plan to weigh you down. Because if you always have one eye on some future goal, you stop paying attention the the job at hand, miss opportunities that might arise, and stay fixedly on one path, even when a better, newer course might have opened up.

  Indra Nooyi

  Jobs, Eye, Opportunity

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• They (the consecrated) are men and woman who can awaken the world. Consecrated life is prophecy. God asks us to fly the nest and to be sent to the frontiers of the world, avoiding the temptation to 'domesticate' them. This is the most concrete way of imitating the Lord.

  Pope Francis

  Men, Temptation, World

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• The image of the presence, whatever it was, waiting there for him to go -this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly with all his dread, he did stop short - he hung back from really seeing. The risk was too great and his fear too definite: it took at this moment an awful specific form.

  Henry James

  Fear, Waiting, Risk

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• Phylogeny and ontogeny are, therefore, the two coordinated branches of morphology. Phylogeny is the developmental history [Entwickelungsgeschichte] of the abstract, genealogical individual; ontogeny, on the other hand, is the developmental history of the concrete, morphological individual.

  Ernst Haeckel

  Science, Hands, Two

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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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• There is an aesthetic crisis in writing, which is this: how do we write emotionally of scenes involving computers? How do we make concrete, or at least reconstructable in the minds of our readers, the terrible, true passions that cross telephony lines? Right now my field must tackle describing a world where falling in love, going to war and filling out tax forms looks the same; it looks like typing.

  Quinn Norton

  Falling In Love, War, Passion

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• Art can't be compared with journalism; it can't deal with concrete issues.

  Mona Hatoum

  Art, Issues, Journalism

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• I truly believe that when a person makes a concrete decision and takes action towards a goal they've set, that the universe will step in and provide opportunities.

  Tamara Tunie

  Believe, Opportunity, Goal

  "Tamara Tunie on Her Feinstein's Show and Audition Advice". Interview with Jordyn Taylor, www.backstage.com. October 25, 2012.

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• Battles are won through the ability of men to express concrete ideas in clear and unmistakable language.

  Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall

  Military, Men, Ideas

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• God Bless the grass That grows through the crack They roll the concrete over it To try and keep it back The concrete gets tired Of what it has to do It breaks and it buckles And the grass grows through. God bless the grass

  Malvina Reynolds

  Tired, Trying, Cracks

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• Lofty words cannot construct an alliance or maintain it; only concrete deeds can do that.

  John F. Kennedy

  Alliances, Deeds, Constructs

  Kennedy, John F. (1964). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963”, p.520, Best Books on

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• The customer is an object to be manipulated, not a concrete person whose aims the businessman is interested to satisfy.

  Erich Fromm

  Businessman, Aim, Persons

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.124, Open Road Media

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• Finding solitude in the concrete jungle is powerful and peaceful.

  Michael Dolan

  Powerful, Concrete Jungle, Peaceful

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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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• 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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• Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image which I make intelligible in part by means of a statement of fact. This statement is abstract; but what I see is concrete.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Morning, Spring, Mean

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• Sociology and anthropology are not disciplines which take easily to situations where people are able to live out their fantasies, not just in the symbolic action of ritual, but in the concrete theater of society at large.

  Jonathan Raban

  Discipline, People, Society

  Jonathan Raban (2017). “Soft City: Picador Classic”, p.53, Pan Macmillan

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