Quotes About Substructure

A mountain is not a mountain if there is nothing below.

A typical quotient construction for an algebraic structure A will identify some substructure B and regard two elements of A as "equivalent if they "differ by an element of B.

The notion of a thing is thus seen to be an abstraction, in which it is conceptually separated from its infinite background and substructure. Actually, however, a thing does not and could not exist apart from the context from which it has thus been conceptually abstracted. And therefore the world is not made by putting together the various "things" in it, but, rather, these things are only approximately what we find on analysis in certain contexts and under suitable conditions. To

I remember how, as a boy, I used to collect the cork tips of my father's cigarettes and stick them in my stamp albums. I believed they contained his unspoken words, which one day would explain everything. I have not changed. Now I explore my memories, trying to discover the substructure hidden beneath my past actions, searching for the link to connect them all.

since the strong materialistic substructure that lies under most concepts of socialism seems to oblige socialists to reject nonmaterial phenomena out of hand and without inspection of facts.