Quotes About Abstraction

The use of the commodity is the name and image of the commodity itself. Use-value is irrelevant to the form of consumption – and fantasy, wish, or interpretation – that seals the relation of image to consciousness. In the 'real abstraction' that constitutes the fully realized industrial commodity

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

I lost the power of attending to impressions per se, and always abstracted from them and sought the scientific and intellectual and abstract that lay behind them, so that it wouldn't have occurred to me

These two sentences suffice to show, as I shall try to prove, that Bergson does not know what number is, and has himself no clear idea of it.

When an individual partakes of an idea, the individual and the idea are similar; therefore there will have to be another idea, embracing both the particulars and the original idea. And there will have to be yet another, embracing the particulars and the two ideas, and so on ad infinitum. Thus every idea, instead of being one, becomes an infinite series of ideas.

I suspect that even the Universe, as considered by metaphysics, involves such a connexion with particulars. In logic, on the contrary, where we are concerned not merely with what does exist, but with whatever might or could exist or be, no reference to actual particulars is involved.

It can be shown that a mathematical web of some kind can be woven about any universe containing several objects. The fact that our universe lends itself to mathematical treatment is not a fact of any great philosophical significance.

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

Abstraction is a mental process we use when trying to discern what is essential or relevant to a problem; it does not require a belief in abstract entities.

Many who have had an opportunity of knowing any more about mathematics confuse it with arithmetic, and consider it an arid science. In reality, however, it is a science which requires a great amount of imagination.

Enjoying art is a personal matter. It's made up by contemplation, silence, abstraction.

When I started the band, the name 'Silver Jews' had no literal meaning - it was just an abstraction.

I often avoid using the terms 'figuration' and 'abstraction' because I've always tried to have it both ways. I want the experience of looking at one of my paintings to be similar to the process of making the painting - you go from the big picture to something very intense and detailed, and then back again.

My characters have undergone the same process of simplification as the colors. Now that they have been simplified, they appear more human and alive than if they had been represented in all their details.

In the final scene of Power, the Supreme Court justices appear as a striking abstraction: Nine scowling masks line up in a row on top of a giant podium. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes speaks the majority opinion: 'Water power, the right to convert it into electric energy, and the electric energy thus produced constitute property belonging to the United States.

La fotografía, que tiene tantos usos narcisistas, también es un instrumento poderoso para despersonalizar nuestra relación con el mundo; y ambos usos son complementarios. Como unos binoculares cuyos extremos pueden confundirse, la cámara vuelve íntimas y cercanas las cosas exóticas, y pequeñas, abstractas, extrañas y lejanas las cosas familiares.

You don't believe in Nature anymore. It's too isolated from you. You've abstracted it. It's so messy and damaged and sad. Your eyes glaze as you travel life's highway past all the crushed animals and the Big Gulp cups.

Whenever the mind tries to ascend into realms of new and sublime abstraction, matter persists and confines it in the cellar of habit.

Lo desconocido es una abstracción; lo conocido, un desierto; pero lo conocido a medias, lo vislumbrado, es el lugar perfecto para hacer ondular deseo y alucinación

Nach dem demokratischen Verständnis muss der Maßstab jeder Aburteilung abstrakt sein. Das folgt aus dem Verbot von Einzelfallgesetzen. [...] Wozu sollte das Abstrakte uns dienen, wenn nicht als Maßstab für Aburteilungen?

My forms are geometric, but they don't interact in a geometric sense. They're just forms that exist everywhere, even if you don't see them.

Programming is modelisation of real life.

on sound] It's just the one most all-embracing, forgiving, understanding thing there is. Just in the full abstraction of it, it doesn't ask any questions and you don't have to explain yourself. And it's the one world where...that can cover all the ... emotional levels of you. At least, I'm the kind of person who when it comes to, say, something like language or just communicating on a daily basis, I feel like I'm trying to put an ocean through a straw.

You can still tell the truth by "pointing to" an abstraction or assessment of your mind, if your intent is simply to point out your thought, rather than to make the other person believe your thought to be the "right interpretation" of reality.