#Abstraction Quotes

“No man ever saw the people of whom he forms a part. No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States. Its personnel extends through all the nations, and across the seas, and into every corner of the world in the persons of the representatives of the United States in foreigncapitals and in foreign centres of commerce.”

“We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.”

“The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.”

“Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.”

“Algebra applies to the clouds.”

“Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!”

“The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.”

“To arrive at abstraction, it is always necessary to begin with a concrete reality.”

“I like working with sound; sound and rhythm. I like the abstract more than "What does that mean?" Nobody ever says to you, "Why did you use a harmonium?" Or "What is that ringing sound that occurs here?" The questions are always "What does that song mean?" or "What were you trying to say here?"”

“The abstract music is just more interesting because it doesn't really have anything to say, but if it is good, it creates thoughts and feelings, and I enjoy that. For me, once the music creates those thoughts and feelings, I begin to write a song about it.”

“Whatever is most abstract may perhaps be the summit of reality.”

“Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree.”

“The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.”

“Gray is the color of all theory”

“All that philosophers have handled for millennia has been conceptual mummies; nothing actual has ever escaped from their hands alive.”