Quotes About Concrete

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

At every sound check, I try to practice on the stage that we're gonna play on that night, 'cause every stage is different. Whether it's concrete or whether it's plywood or whether it's Plexiglas, it all requires different things. You can't dance on concrete as well as you can dance on Plexiglas.

The term neo-liberal does not have a good definition. It's mostly used when you are angry with somebody or dislike someone, you call them a neo-liberal. Because otherwise, there is no concrete definition to the term.

It simply cannot be that the president can name his own temporary attorney general to supervise an investigation in which he and his family have a direct, concrete interest.

Only this morning I heard a radio speaker make the observation that, in most matters, we move in either of two directions: from words to things, or from things to words. That is to say, if we do not make the journey from theories and ideals to concrete situations, then the concrete situations will be lost under a smog of words.

It was not an easy vocation, being a priest in that country, where magic was vibrantly everywhere, maddening and unquenchable, and the gods were assumed to be a kind of super-fairy except that you never saw them nor were offered any concrete proof of what the priests claimed they had done for you.

The Pentagon was built because World War Two was coming, and because World War Two was coming it was built without much steel. Steel was needed elsewhere, as always in wartime. Thus the giant building was a monument to the strength and mass of concrete. So much sand was needed for the mix it was dredged right out of the Potomac River, not far from the rising walls themselves. Nearly a million tons of it. The result was extreme solidity.

Turner eased to a stop, third car in line, in a narrowing lane, with the guard shack ahead on her left, and an unbroken row of concrete dragons' teeth on her right, each one of them a squat, truncated pyramid about three feet tall, each one of them no doubt built on a rebar armature and socketed deep below grade.

three results. The grind of powdered concrete, the screech of bending

Contrast that with the depiction of Jesus Christ in the gospels. They talk about someone who actually lived several decades earlier, and they name names—crucified under Pontius Pilate, when Caiaphas was the high priest, and the father of Alexander and Rufus carried his cross, for example. That's concrete historical stuff. It has nothing in common with stories about what supposedly happened 'once upon a time.

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf

A squat gray building of only thirty-four stories.

Crass," Dr Robert agreed, "but crass precisely because you're such inadequate materialists. Abstract materialism—that's what you profess. Whereas we make a point of being materialists concretely—materialistic on the wordless levels of seeing and touching and smelling, of tensed muscles and dirty hands. Abstract materialism is as bad as abstract idealism, it makes immediate spiritual experience almost impossible.

Sometimes," Vijaya agreed, "even more. For the simple reason that a talent for manipulating symbols tempts its possessors into habitual symbol manipulation, and habitual symbol manipulation is an obstacle in the way of concrete experiencing and the reception of gratuitous graces.

The tree still celebrates its essential treeness through song, as nature will do whatever we impose on her. Birds still sing their ancient songs in the middle of a bustling city, with all its cacophony of man-made sounds. Dry leaves still rustle like dice even when growing against concrete or hewn stone. Out of a tiny crack in a pavement will crawl a perfectly formed insect, a creature of curves and protrusions amidst a linear world of man's engineering.

There is really no such thing as the novel," observes novelist Vincent McHugh. "The novel is always a novel—the specific problem, the particular case, the concrete instance.

It is in [the] process of making something... that the creator contacts a concrete reality outside his subjective life and moves into the realm of the transcendent.

At ground level Alexanderplatz is a monstrous expanse of grey concrete designed to make people feel small. It works.

This landscape consists of Pablo Casals' cello and four turkey vultures riding the ribbon of warm air rising from the highway. Concrete forms for abstractions my mind can only grope at: the wings and blood, the blue and black and float and soar, the aching beauty.

It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Sen. McCain on important economic issues facing the country. That kind of distraction hurts not only Sen. McCain's ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country's problems; it hurts the country.

Anyhow, he gives large parties," said Jordan, changing the subject with an urban distaste for the concrete. "And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy.

Those who are long on logic, definitions, abstractions, and formulas are frequently short on a sense of the concrete.

It can be argued that Advent, more than any other season of the church year, is immediately relevant to our concrete lives as individuals, to the concrete life of the church under stress, and to the concrete headlines in the newspaper.

The artistic capability of reinforced concrete is so fantastic - that is the way to go.