Materials Quotes

• What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space.

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Space, Variation, Body

  60 Copy quote

• I move very slowly. It's usually material first. I sit with the material for a long time.

  Jim Hodges

  Moving, Long, Firsts

  6 Copy quote

• A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.

  Fisher Ames

  Volcanoes, Democracy, Way

  Fisher Ames (1809). “Works of Fisher Ames, compiled by a number of his friends”, p.24

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

• What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.

  John Berger

  Inspirational, Photography, Light

  John Berger, Jean Mohr (2016). “Another Way of Telling: A Possible Theory of Photography”, p.75, Bloomsbury Publishing

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• You begin with the possibilities of the material.

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Art, Architecture, Possibility

  63 Copy quote

• The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

  Karl Marx

  Class, Ideas, Intellectual

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1970). “The German Ideology”, p.64, INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS CO

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we seed millions of acres of land with these plants, what happens to foraging birds, to insects, to microbes, to the other animals, when they come in contact and digest plants that are producing materials ranging from plastics to vaccines to pharmaceutical products?

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Animal, Land, Vaccines

  85 Copy quote

• I have such a great band. We had played all this material on the road. I just wanted to let it fly.

  Lucinda Williams

  Band, Wanted

  7 Copy quote

• I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at commensurate speed.

  Maya Angelou

  Life, God, Responsibility

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.94, Modern Library

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm just having a wonderful time. It's an interesting thing that I'm very comfortable with this material and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I did MacBeth.

  F. Murray Abraham

  Interesting, Wonderful, Comfortable

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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am convinced that material things can contribute a lot to making one's life pleasant, but, basically, if you do not have very good friends and relatives who matter to you, life will be really empty and sad and material things cease to be important.

  David Rockefeller

  Friendship, Family, Money

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

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• All you're trying to do in an improvisation is get as much material as possible for the editing room.

  Martin Short

  Editing, Trying, Rooms

  Interview with Jeff Otto, www.ign.com. May 6, 2005.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have always appreciated those who dare to experiment with materials and proportions.

  Zaha Hadid

  Appreciated, Proportion, Dare

  "Zaha Hadid and United Nude Unveil the nOVa Shoe" by Becky Quintal, www.archdaily.com. July 5, 2013.

  271 Copy quote

  Show source

• The forces that are in play on climate change essentially revolve around the generation of power, the transportation of goods and services and people, and the sorts of materials that we use to fuel the whole of our civilisation.

  Peter Garrett

  Play, People, Generations

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Content arises out of certain considerations about form, material, context-and that when that subject matter is sufficiently far away.

  Anish Kapoor

  Matter, Far Away, Consideration

  14 Copy quote

• Genius is nothing more than common faculties refined to a greater intensity. There are no astonishing ways of doing astonishing things. All astonishing things are done by ordinary materials.

  Benjamin Haydon

  Ordinary, Genius, Done

  Benjamin Robert Haydon, Frederick Wordsworth Haydon (1876). “Correspondence and Table-talk: With a Memoir”, p.311

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To pick up a cigarette wrapper or wine label or an old letter or the end of a carton is my way of dealing with those things that do not originate in me, in my I.

  Robert Motherwell

  Wine, Labels, Letters

  Robert Motherwell, David Rosand (1997). “Robert Motherwell on paper: drawings, prints, collages”, Harry N Abrams Inc

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Use lots of paint and don't worry, they will make more.

  Richard Schmid

  Worry, Use, Paint

  6 Copy quote

• Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Powerful, Men, Aggravation

  "Paul Ryan's faith in Ayn Rand is a political problem for Romney" by Giles Fraser, www.theguardian.com. August 13, 2012.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• We estimate that once Iraq acquires fissile material - whether from a foreign source or by securing the materials to build an indigenous fissile material capability - it could fabricate a nuclear weapon within one year.

  John Bolton

  Years, Iraq, Nuclear

  7 Copy quote

• In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Hands, Order, Accepted

  "Constructing Futures: Industry leaders and futures thinking in construction". Book by Paul Chan, Rachel Cooper, p. 105, December 8, 2010.

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Music, Clothes, Shelter

  18 Copy quote

• Appellant constituted a legitimate class of one, and this provides a basis for Congress's decision to proceed with dispatch with respect to his materials.

  William J. Brennan

  Class, Decision, Congress

  7 Copy quote

• If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.

  Winston Churchill

  Peace, Race, Wish

  Winston Churchill (1961). “The Unwritten Alliance: Speeches 1953 to 1959”

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• A laborer no longer makes whole articles. He receives raw materials, puts his touch on them, and passes them to another worker in the series. When the articles are quite finished they are carried out of sight by currents of commercial exchange. These currents are untraceable.

  John Bates Clark

  Sight, Raw Materials, Currents

  8 Copy quote