Quotes About Abstraction

He'd come to war to see abstractions become realities. Instead he'd seen the reverse. Everything was abstract now.

Bjork has this kind of abstraction and formalism that you associate with art music or avant-garde music.

I'm really interested in the nondefinitive element of abstraction.

La mia ricerca dell'esattezza si biforca in due direzioni. Da una parte la riduzione degli avvenimenti contingenti a schemi astratti con cui si possano compiere operazioni e dimostrare teoremi; e dall'altra parte lo sforzo delle parole per render conto con la maggior precisione possibile dell'aspetto sensibile delle cose.

The world is reduced to a sheet of paper on which nothing can be written except abstract words.

To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory. Its borders are protected by dense thickets of technical terms; its landscapes are a mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts. Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.

One of the most amazing things about mathematics is the people who do math aren't usually interested in application, because mathematics itself is truly a beautiful art form. It's structures and patterns, and that's what we love, and that's what we get off on.

I specialize in generalizations.

The violent quarrel between the abstractionists and the surrealists seems to me quite unnecessary. All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious.

We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.

We speak of virtue, honour, reason; but our thought does not translate any one of these concepts into a substance.

Women exist in my imagination. So they are necessarily a type of abstraction. Many women criticise me for this vision, but I explain to them it's to be expected, because I am a man.

Abstraction is one of the greatest visionary tools ever invented by human beings to imagine, decipher, and depict the world.

Let us thank God for valour in abstraction For those who go their own way, will not kiss The arse of law and order nor compound For physical comfort at the price of pride

M]an [has] the power of abstraction from himself[.]

The course of religious development … consists … in … that man abstracts more and more from God, and attributes more and more to himself. … That which to a later age or a cultured people is given by nature or reason, is to an earlier age, or to a yet uncultured people, given by God.

God as God, … as a being not finite, not human, not materially conditioned, not phenomenal, is only an object of thought. … [H]e is known … only by abstraction and negation … There is no other spirit, no other intelligence which enlightens him, which is active in him. … The 'infinite spirit,' is therefore nothing else than the intelligence disengaged from the limits of individuality and corporeality[.]

Os bens, as mercadorias, as riquezas e todas as demais noções de conduta não são elementos da natureza, mas sim elementos da mente e da conduta humana. Quem deseje entrar neste segundo universo deve abstrair-se do mundo exterior, centrando a sua atenção no significado das ações empreendidas pelos homens

The process of thinking itself requires us to view the universe in the direction of entropy, since an abstraction always involves information loss, since symbols 'abstract' complexity from observed objects.

The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.

Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing.

You can eliminate color and still have a painting that works, but you must have drawing, value and design.

I try to look at design from a more conceptual standpoint.

In retrospect I can see that my desire to create abstractions has become more and more radical. Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what's behind something.