#abstract

In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes. ↗

— Theodor Adorno

#conception #concrete #responsibility #universal #vanishes

I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting. ↗

— Max Beckmann

#already #each #enough #hardly #i

The ABC of our profession is to avoid these large abstract terms in order to try to discover behind them the only concrete realities, which are human beings. ↗

— Marc Bloch

#abstract #avoid #behind #beings #concrete

I felt like my parents were always involved with abstraction, and I wanted to do something very specific. ↗

— Lena Dunham

#always #felt #i #involved #like

I like the fact that music is more abstract. ↗

— Bryan Ferry

#fact #i #like #more #music

As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I don't wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere. ↗

— J. M. Coetzee

#abstract thought #creation #deny #development #fantasies

My response, a dubious and hesitant one, is that it has been and may continue to be, in the time that is left to me, more productive to live out the question than to try to answer it in abstract terms. ↗

— J. M. Coetzee

#answer #been #continue #dubious #hesitant

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism. ↗

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#aphorism #best #consists #exclusively #greatest

How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum. ↗

— Joseph Joubert

#appear #create #hide #how #make

Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. ↗

— Robert Toombs

#african #another #blind #both #deaf