Concrete Quotes - Page 5

• The road is a word, conceived elsewhere and laid across the country in the wound prepared for it: a word made concrete and thrust among us.

  Wendell Berry

  Country, Made, Elsewhere

  Wendell Berry (2009). “Remembering”, p.96, Counterpoint Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or sub oppressors. The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradiction of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them to be men is to be oppressors

  Paulo Freire

  Struggle, Men, Existential

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.45, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as 'dim land of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstraction.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, Expression, Land

  Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound (2009). “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition”, p.9, Fordham Univ Press

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Journal what you love, what you hate, what's in your head, what's important. Journaling organizes your thoughts; allows you to see things in a concrete way that otherwise you might not see. Focus on what you think you need to find in your art.

  Kay WalkingStick

  Art, Hate, Thinking

  10 Copy quote

• By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet.Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil. What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the form that underlies this apparent chaos.

  Robert Adam

  Dog, Oil, Rivers

  7 Copy quote

• Economy and ideology. The claim (presented as an essential postulate of historical materialism) that every fluctuation of politics and ideology can be presented and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must be contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice with the authentic testimony of Marx, the author of concrete political and historical works.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Expression, Practice, Political

  "Selections from the Prison Notebooks". Book by Antonio Gramsci, 1971.

  82 Copy quote

  Show source

• A revolution was never fought, throughout history, for ideals. Revolutions were fought for much more concrete things: food, clothes, housing, and to relieve intolerable oppression. … I know of no one, outside of Patrick Henry, willing to die for an abstraction.

  William Powell

  Clothes, Revolution, Oppression

  "The Anarchist Cookbook". Book by William Powell, Chapter Two: "Electronics, Sabotage, and Surveillance", 1971.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Style offers concrete rules you can follow. You can use it as a resource rather than a barrier to feeling good about yourself.

  Stacy London

  Feel Good, Feelings, Style

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Birth Control which has been criticized as negative and destructive, is really the greatest and most truly eugenic method, and its adoption as part of the program of Eugenics would immediately give a concrete and realistic power to that science. . . as the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health.

  Margaret Sanger

  Mean, Eugenics, Giving

  Margaret Sanger, Michael W. Perry, H. G. Wells (2003). “The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective: The Birth Control Classic”, p.372, Inkling Books

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• To take the choice of another ... to forget their concrete reality, to abstract them, to forget that you are a node in a matrix, that actions have consequences. We must not take the choice of another being. What is community but a means to ... for all we individuals to have ... our choices.

  China Mieville

  Mean, Reality, Actions Have Consequences

  4 Copy quote

• Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin], your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Ideas, Action, Unworthy

  11 Copy quote

• Lofty talk about 'social justice' or 'fairness' boils down to greatly expanded powers for politicians, since those pretty words have no concrete definition. They are a blank check for creating disparities in power that dwarf disparities in income - and are far more dangerous.

  Thomas Sowell

  Dwarves, Creating, Justice

  41 Copy quote

• If there is a problem somewhere, this is what happens. Three people will try to do something concrete to settle the issue. Ten people will give a lecture analyzing what the three are doing. One hundred people will commend or condemn the ten for their lecture. One thousand people will argue about the problem. And one person-only one- will involve himself so deeply in the true solution that he is too busy to listen to any of it. Now...which person are you?

  Elias Chacour

  Issues, People, Giving

  13 Copy quote

• Anybody who can't hear the difference between a ball hitting wood and a ball hitting concrete must be blind.

  Yogi Berra

  Yankees, Differences, Balls

  9 Copy quote

• Understanding people's difficulties and-just as crucial-helping people understand their own difficulties and teaching them concrete ways to help themselves will help them better deal with their own lives and, in turn, ours.

  Kathryn Erskine

  Teaching, People, Empathy

  52 Copy quote

• Identity is marketed in national capitalism as a property. It is something you can purchase, or purchase a relation to. Or it is something you already own that you can express: my masculinity, my queerness . But identity need not be simply a caption for an image of an unchangeable concrete self. It is also a theory of the future, of history.

  Lauren Berlant

  Self, Identity, Needs

  9 Copy quote

• I am a Republican because I believe in the constitution, strength in national defense, limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility as the concrete foundation for American government. They reinforce the resolve that the United States is the greatest country in the world and we can all be eternally grateful to our founding fathers for the beautiful legacy they left us today.

  Martha Raye

  Beautiful, Country, Father

  "Take It from the Big Mouth: The Life of Martha Raye" by Jane Maddern Pittrone, (p. 220), April 8, 1999.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have come to believe, deeply and firmly, that we can create a poverty free world if we want to. I came to this conclusion not as a product of a pious dream, but as a concrete result of experience gained in the work of the Grameen Bank.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Dream, Business, Believe

  Muhammad Yunus (2001). “Banker to the Poor: The Autobiography of Muhammad Yunus, Founder of the Grameen Bank”, Oxford University Press, USA

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Terrorists do not actually need nuclear weapons. They have been conveniently supplied with 103 nuclear power plants scattered throughout the United States (438 of these deadly facilities exist throughout the world). A planned meltdown at one of these facilities would make the World Trade Center attacks seem like child's play. The massive concrete containers protecting the reactors are not strong enough to withstand the impact of a jumbo jet.

  Helen Caldicott

  Strong, Children, War

  Helen Caldicott (2013). “The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex”, p.12, The New Press

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science condemns itself to failure when, yielding to the infatuation of the serious, it aspires to attain being, to contain it, and to possess it; but it finds its truth if it considers itself as a free engagement of thought in the given, aiming, at each discovery, not at fusion with the thing, but at the possibility of new discoveries; what the mind then projects is the concrete accomplishment of its freedom.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Discovery, Accomplishment, Mind

  Simone de Beauvoir (2011). “The Ethics of Ambiguity”, p.39, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Like the Good Samaritan, may we not be ashamed of touching the wounds of those who suffer, but try to heal them with concrete acts of love.

  Pope Francis

  Touching, Suffering, Trying

  64 Copy quote

• Scripture starts with the particular and then universalizes it. You are called to love your concrete individual neighbor and then to realize that every individual is your neighbor. The point is not to destroy concrete neighborhood in a fit of universalism but to expand the local neighborhood and embrace the universal neighborhood.

  Peter Kreeft

  Love, Scripture, Realizing

  Peter Kreeft (2009). “The God Who Loves You: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”, p.108, Ignatius Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thanks to the euro, our pockets will soon hold solid evidence of a European identity. We need to build on this, and make the euro more than a currency and Europe more than a territory... In the next six months, we will talk a lot about political union, and rightly so. Political union is inseparable from economic union. Stronger growth and Euorpean integration are related issues. In both areas we will take concrete steps forward.

  Laurent Fabius

  Europe, Issues, Political

  7 Copy quote