Quotes About Abstractions

But everything takes a different shape when we pass from abstractions to reality. In the former, everything must be subject to optimism, and we must imagine the one side as well as the other striving after perfection and even attaining it. Will this ever take place in reality?

La culpa y la salvación son abstracciones. Yo no actúo de acuerdo con meras abstracciones.

The truly terrible thing about the war spirit, about the fear and hate hysteria it generates, is that it forces us to think and talk and feel in terms of abstractions—those "communists" this time, those "fascists" last time. But those we are fighting and killing are people—men, women and children—not political, geographic or economic abstractions. They are, in the main, as decent and fearful and confused as we are. And they regard us as abstractions as much as we do them.

Thing-worshipers. Not idea-worshipers. A man who worships things can't ever be taught to worship abstractions.

Where jargon turns living issues into abstractions, and where jargon ends by competing with jargon, people don't have causes. They only have enemies; only the enemies are real.

I knew from my years of writing about NSA abuses that it can be hard to generate serious concern about secret state surveillance: invasion of privacy and abuse of power can be viewed as abstractions, ones that are difficult to get people to care about viscerally.

knew from my years of writing about NSA abuses that it can be hard to generate serious concern about secret state surveillance: invasion of privacy and abuse of power can be viewed as abstractions, ones that are difficult to get people to care about viscerally.

There's nothing like necessity of needing to do something to cause you to come up with abstractions that help you break through the forms.

I care about strangers when they're abstractions, but I feel almost nothing when they're literally in front of me.

At the same time, new concepts and abstractions flow into the picture, taking up the task of describing the universe without reference to such time or space - abstractions for which our language lacks adequate terms.

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

There's something mathematically satisfying about music: notes fit together and harmony and all that. And mathematics has to do with abstractions and making connections.

What runs so contrary to received wisdom is that it really is the male who is the aesthete while the woman is drawn to abstractions. Wealth. Power. What a man seeks is beauty, plain and simple. No other way to put it. The rustle of her clothes, her scent. The sweep of her hair across his naked stomach. Categories all but meaningless to a woman. Lost in her calculations.

What runs so contrary to received wisdom is that it really is the male who is the aesthete while the woman is drawn to abstractions. Wealth. Power. What a man seeks is beauty, plain and simple. No other way to put it. The rustle of her clothes, her scent. The sweep of her hair across his naked stomach. Categories all but meaningless to a woman. Lost in her calculations. That the man knows not how to even name that which enslaves him hardly lightens his burden.

The theory is that if the Internet can't be controlled, then copyright is dead. The thing is, the Internet is a machine for copying things cheaply, quickly, and with as little control as possible, while copyright is the right to control who gets to make copies, so these two abstractions seem destined for a fatal collision, right?

he was more comfortable exploring practical thoughts and real-life situations than metaphysical abstractions or deductive proofs. The

There are a lot of things that fit on a bumper sticker in terms of either liberty or equality or progress that when made more concrete just don't pan out.

People who use the sensing mode are engrossed in what is around them, look only for facts, and find it less interesting to deal with ideas or abstractions. Intuitive people like to dwell in the unseen world of ideas and possibilities, distrustful of physical reality. Whatever

Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.

Westerners think of Hindus as idol worshipers, but what is it they themselves worship? Money and power – aren't those idols? There is nothing wrong or contrary to spiritual truth in using images as reminders of high principles. How many people are able to visualize such abstractions as love or wisdom? The Hindu images are not idols. They are symbols of different aspects of God. Their very variety shows a recognition of the fact that God is infinite. —Paramhansa Yogananda

One of the things anxiety educates you in is how deeply physical thought can be, how concrete. In anxiety, there is no time to luxuriate in abstractions. It's just you and your mind, which has fists and is using them. It may be dualistic and logically untenable to posit the situation as You v. Head; it may not make sense philosophically. But in the throes of anxiety? In the cognitive shit? There's really no other way to think about what's going on.

For over against the convenience of instantaneous communication is the fact that the great economical abstractions of writing, reading, and drawing, the media of reflective thought and deliberate action, will be weakened.

I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passe abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.

The right abstractions can reduce complexity; however, it's often unclear which abstraction within a test will provide the most value to the team.