#abstract

Whatever life may really be, it is to us an abstraction: for the word is a generalised term to signify that which is common to all animals and plants, and which is not directly operative in the inorganic world. ↗

— Oliver Joseph Lodge

#common #directly #inorganic #life #may

The dynamic element in my philosophy, taken as a whole, can be seen as an obstinate and untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction. ↗

— Gabriel Marcel

#against #battle #dynamic #element #obstinate

An administrator in a bureaucratic world is a man who can feel big by merging his non-entity in an abstraction. A real person in touch with real things inspires terror in him. ↗

— Marshall McLuhan

#administrator #big #bureaucratic #feel #him

When I conform to truth, I do not conform to an abstract principle; I conform to the nature of God. ↗

— Kenneth L. Pike

#conform #god #i #i do #nature

The surrealists, and the modern movement in painting as a whole, seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities, in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists, reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai. ↗

— J. G. Ballard

#abstract art #ambiguities #art #childhood #cubism

When you're trying to solve a problem on a new product type, you become completely focused on problems that seem a number of steps removed from the main product. That problem solving can appear a little abstract, and it is easy to lose sight of the product. ↗

— Jonathan Ive

#appear #become #completely #easy #focused

Northern white people love the Negro in a sort of abstract way, as a race; through a sense of justice, charity, and philanthropy, they will liberally assist in his elevation. ↗

— James Weldon Johnson

#assist #charity #elevation #his #justice

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens. ↗

— Jean-Paul Sartre

#after #anything #happens #i #murder

Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#capable #concrete #devotes #enjoying #happiness

When I was thinking about The Lion King, I said, we have to do what theater does best. What theater does best is to be abstract and not to do literal reality. ↗

— Julie Taymor

#abstract #best #does #i #king