Quotes about Abstraction

Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes... Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into unknown areas. Votes: 4

Abstraction is an esoteric language. Votes: 3

Abstraction is the enemy of meaning. Votes: 3

Abstraction and realism work best together. Votes: 3

Abstraction is everybody's zero but nobody's nought. Votes: 3

Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature. Votes: 3

Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence. Votes: 3

Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery, rather than obvious description. Votes: 3

Abstraction and luxury are the guard dogs of the upper class. Votes: 3

Abstraction is the way to the heart - it is not the heart itself. Votes: 3

Abstraction means getting away from a visual interpretation but nearer to an emotional one. Votes: 3

Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot see physically with his eyes. Votes: 3

Abstraction is an exercise in a pre-assured failure. It is a futile attempt to communicate the non-communicable Votes: 3

Abstraction returned as soon as artists tried to come to closer grips with reality than naturalistic representation permitted... Votes: 3

Abstraction and representation are supposed to be going down two very different paths, one sociological and the other aesthetic. Votes: 3

Abstraction is one of the greatest visionary tools ever invented by human beings to imagine, decipher, and depict the world. Votes: 3

Abstraction brings the world into more complex, variable relations; it can extract beauty, alternative topographies, ugliness, and intense actualities from seeming nothingness. Votes: 3

Abstraction is itself an abstract word and has no single meaning ... Every word in our language is abstract, because it represents something else. Votes: 3

Abstraction is a mental process we use when trying to discern what is essential or relevant to a problem; it does not require a belief in abstract entities. Votes: 3

Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable. Votes: 3

Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it. RUMI, attributed, Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction Versus the Richness of Being Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. Votes: 3

Washington isn't a city, it's an abstraction. Votes: 1

I'm really interested in the nondefinitive element of abstraction. Votes: 1

Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions. Votes: 1

Enjoying art is a personal matter. It's made up by contemplation, silence, abstraction. Votes: 1

Reflective abstraction, however, is based not on individual actions but on coordinated actions. Votes: 1

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured. Votes: 1

So the universe is constantly moving in the direction of higher evolutionary impulses, creativity, abstraction, and meaning. Votes: 1

The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction. Votes: 1

Early-twentieth-century abstraction is art's version of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. It's the idea that changed everything everywhere: quickly, decisively, for good. Votes: 1

The job of the color photographer is to provide some level of abstraction that can take the image out of the daily. Votes: 1

The dynamic element in my philosophy, taken as a whole, can be seen as an obstinate and untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction. Votes: 1

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself. Votes: 1

Of the many forms of false culture, a premature converse with abstractions is perhaps the most likely to prove fatal to the growth of a masculine vigour of intellect. Votes: 1

We are so much the victims of abstraction that with the Earth in flames we can barely rouse ourselves to wander across the room and look at the thermostat. Votes: 1

The first type of abstraction from objects I shall refer to as simple abstraction, but the second type I shall call reflective abstraction, using this term in a double sense. Votes: 1

On the one hand, there are individual actions such as throwing, pushing, touching, rubbing. It is these individual actions that give rise most of the time to abstraction from objects. Votes: 1

An administrator in a bureaucratic world is a man who can feel big by merging his non-entity in an abstraction. A real person in touch with real things inspires terror in him. Votes: 1

I work in colour sometimes, but I guess the images I most connect to, historically speaking, are in black and white. I see more in black and white - I like the abstraction of it. Votes: 1

From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind. Votes: 1

Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion. Votes: 1

I'd say that my profession ends where architectural thinking ends - architectural thinking in terms of thinking about programs and organizational structure. These abstractions play a role in many other disciplines, and those disciplines are now defining their 'architectures' as well. Votes: 1

In the 'Nude Descending a Staircase,' I wanted to create a static image of movement: movement is an abstraction, a deduction articulated within the painting, without our knowing if a real person is or isn't descending an equally real staircase. Votes: 1

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality. Votes: 1

The Geometer has the special privilege to carry out, by abstraction, all constructions by means of the intellect. Who, then, would wish to prevent me from freely considering figures hanging on a balance imagined to be at an infinite distance beyond the confines of the world? Votes: 1

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Votes: 0

I like residing in abstraction. Votes: 0

Poetry is an abstraction bloodied. Votes: 0

Art, indeed, began with abstraction. Votes: 0

Light is snow sifted / To an abstraction. Votes: 0

All art is an abstraction to some degree. Votes: 0

A study, by its very nature, is an abstraction. Votes: 0

The state, the state apparatus, is not an abstraction. Votes: 0

The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction. Votes: 0

Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction. Votes: 0

An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction. Votes: 0

Philosophy does not exist. It is nothing but an hypostatized abstraction. Votes: 0

An abstraction will move a mountain: Nothing can withstand an idea. Votes: 0

All art is abstract, because art is an abstraction of the truth. Votes: 0

Almost without exception, blue refers to the domain of abstraction and immateriality. Votes: 0

I think, with abstraction, it's easy to fall into a sort of pastiche. Votes: 0

Seek art and abstraction in nature by dreaming in the presence of it. Votes: 0

The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty. Votes: 0

We have tried to fit man into abstraction, but he does not fit. Votes: 0

Two elements are needed to form a truth - a fact and an abstraction Votes: 0

Two elements are needed to form a truth - a fact and an abstraction. Votes: 0

With greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials. Votes: 0

Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment. Votes: 0

To arrive at abstraction, it is always necessary to begin with a concrete reality. Votes: 0

I'm an abstract painter not just for myself, but because I really believe in abstraction. Votes: 0

Only in relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction, and certainly not in isolation. Votes: 0

Absolute honesty is as absurd an abstraction as an absolute temperature or an absolute value. Votes: 0

Mankind? That is an abstraction. There have always been and always will be only individuals. Votes: 0

By means of the sign, man frees himself from the here and now for abstraction. Votes: 0

Music mirrors where we should go, have gone and can go. Music is an abstraction. Votes: 0

If I choose abstraction over reality, it is because I consider it the lesser chaos. Votes: 0

I expect of abstraction as much as what imagery does for me... to carry meaning. Votes: 0

Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another. Votes: 0

Nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction. Votes: 0

Time is an abstraction which, on earth, exists only for the human brain it has evolved. Votes: 0

Time isn't made of anything. It is an abstraction. Just a meaning that we impose upon motion. Votes: 0

Freedom which has genuine meaning is more than a timeless abstraction, more than an absence of restraints. Votes: 0

The career of a young theoretical physicist consists of treating the harmonic oscillator in ever-increasing levels of abstraction. Votes: 0

Everything in dancing is style, allusion, the essence of many thoughts and feelings. The abstraction of many moments. Votes: 0

The Geometer has the special privilege to carry out, by abstraction, all constructions by means of the intellect. Votes: 0

In principle, any abstraction of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it. Votes: 0

I've always wondered, like, what is so masculine about abstraction? How did men get the ownership over this? Votes: 0

When truth is nothing but truth, it's unnatural, it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world. Votes: 0

No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers. Votes: 0

In my experience, you either have encapsulation and abstraction or you have neither. There is no middle ground. Votes: 0

I felt like my parents were always involved with abstraction, and I wanted to do something very specific. Votes: 0

I still believe in abstraction, but now I know that one ends with abstraction, not starts with it Votes: 0

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction. Votes: 0

She really was pretty, for a grown-up, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative. Votes: 0

Every work of art is an abstraction from time; it denies the reality of change and decay and death. Votes: 0

The desert is no longer a landscape, it is a pure form produced by the abstraction of all others. Votes: 0

Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction... Votes: 0

The appearance is the allusion of abstraction when in fact I am in control of every aspect of that symmetry. Votes: 0

The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint. Votes: 0

A perfume is more than an extract it is a presence in abstraction. A perfume, for me, is a mystique. Votes: 0

It is not that uncommon for the cost of an abstraction to outweigh the benefit it delivers. Kill one today! Votes: 0

I wouldn't say I'm a very technical [guitar] player. I'm more intuitive - it's always more about chasing an abstraction. Votes: 0

People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger in abstraction, and their light dies away. Votes: 0

Arabs are a complete abstraction in the propaganda world and all the death and destruction is completely unreal to Americans. Votes: 0

The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that "beauty always takes place in the particular." Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction. Votes: 0

To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people. Votes: 0

The Hindus have cultivated the power of analysis and abstraction. No nation has yet produced a grammar like that of Panini. Votes: 0

There is an amount of abstraction in my movies, and sometimes they don't really understand it until the film is finished. Votes: 0

Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Votes: 0

The pendulum of mathematics swings back and forth towards abstraction and away from it with a timing that remains to be estimated. Votes: 0

The imagination is the liberty of the mind It is intrpeid and eager and the extreme of its achievement lies in abstraction. Votes: 0

Someone who is incapable of drawing, and cannot master line or colour perspective can always express themselves in some form of abstraction. Votes: 0

The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer. Votes: 0

I do believe abstraction is and was meant to embody deep emotion. I believe that's its job, in the history of art. Votes: 0

Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation - I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances. Votes: 0

If I see a human body on the stage, I don't see it as an abstraction. I see it as a body. Votes: 0

Computer Science is a science of abstraction -creating the right model for a problem and devising the appropriate mechanizable techniques to solve it. Votes: 0

What I hope is I'll eventually be seen as an actual individual, not as some abstraction - an art dealer running a museum." Votes: 0

Whether a photo or music, or a drawing or anything else I might do—it's ultimately all an abstraction of my peculiar experience. Votes: 0

Pay attention to minute particulars. Take care of the little ones. Generalization and abstraction are the plea of the hypocrite, scoundrel, and knave. Votes: 0

An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor. Votes: 0

When a man knows that the abstraction ten exists - nothing on earth can stop him from looking for the fact of eleven. Votes: 0

What I hope is I'll eventually be seen as an actual individual, not as some abstraction - an art dealer running a museum. Votes: 0

The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise. Votes: 0

If you want an application to be portable, you don't necessarily create an abstraction layer like a microkernel so much as you program intelligently. Votes: 0

True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution. Votes: 0

What I actually admire in Perl is its ability to provide a very successful abstraction of the horrible mess that is collectively called Unix. Votes: 0

The economy is not an abstraction. The economy consists of people, and it will only grow if people feel secure and are reasonably free. Votes: 0

Wisdom... is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion. Votes: 0

By object is meant some element in the complex whole that is defined in abstraction from the whole of which it is a distinction. Votes: 0

Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation. Votes: 0

There is nothing mysterious, as some have tried to maintain, about the applicability of mathematics. What we get by abstraction from something can be returned. Votes: 0

Men of ideas and men of action have much to learn from each other, and the truly great are men of both action and abstraction. Votes: 0

Jesus never spoke of truth in abstraction, as something that stands alone. Jesus always spoke of truth in relation to God being revealed through himself. Votes: 0

Cubism did not accept the logical consequences of its own discoveries; it was not developing abstraction towards its own goal, the expression of pure reality. Votes: 0

As a movement Cubism had consistently stopped short of complete abstraction. Heretics such as Delaunay had painted pure abstractions but in so doing had deserted Cubism. Votes: 0

In past times when one lived in contact with nature, abstraction was easy; it was done unconsciously. Now in our denaturalized age abstraction becomes an effort. Votes: 0

All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness and opacity. All that is done with life inclines toward knowledge, abstraction, generality transfiguration and transparency. Votes: 0

To think of abstraction as an end in itself is undoubtedly letting oneself be led into a cul-de-sac and can only lead to exhaustion and impotence. Votes: 0

Malevitch discovered abstraction as an experimental principle that can propel creative work to previously unheard levels of invention; this abstract work allowed much greater levels of creativity. Votes: 0

Yes, there was an element of abstraction and unreality in misfortune. But when an abstraction starts to kill you, you have to get to work on it. Votes: 0

Keep Hope alive, particularly if Hope is the name of a very cute puppy and not some ill-defined abstraction that is in fact code for big government. Votes: 0

My work has the abstraction underneath it all now & what I deliberately set out to do down here, for this is the perfect realistic abstraction in landscape. Votes: 0

No doubt, in complete abstraction one has a feeling of a great shock, if not an explosion, and in approaching the real, one feels health and truth restored... Votes: 0

The main reason why men and women make different aesthetic judgments is the fact that the latter, generally incapable of abstraction, only admire what meets their complete approval. Votes: 0

Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling. Votes: 0

Every good composition is above all a work of abstraction. All good painters know this. But the painter cannot dispense with subjects altogether without his work suffering impoverishment. Votes: 0

Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute. Votes: 0

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; its a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction. Votes: 0

Any community that remains an abstraction is an easy target for prejudice and cruelty, but any community that becomes fully humanized is much harder to treat in that way. Votes: 0

ADMINISTRATION, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting. Votes: 0

America is a simplified ideological abstraction, an emotive symbol represented by other abstract symbols like the flag. It is the object of a faithlike devotion, unencumbered by honest history. Votes: 0

A harmonious combination... enough abstraction that the image is sustained by the eye; enough reality that it is sustained by reason and experience. Share this quote with a friend Votes: 0

To be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only a factor of a more concrete element of nature. Votes: 0

Elegance is reduction, simplification, condensation. It is spare, stark, sleek. Elegance is cultivated abstraction. The source of Greek and Roman classicism - clarity, order, proportion, balance - is in Egypt. Votes: 0

Remember that every science is based upon an abstraction. An abstraction is taking a point of view or looking at things under a certain aspect or from a particular angle. Votes: 0

Everything abstract is ultimately part of the concrete. Everything inanimate finally serves the living. That is why every activity dealing in abstraction stands in ultimate service to a living whole. Votes: 0

Don't get stuck on the level of words. A word is no more than a means to an end. It's an abstraction. Not unlike a signpost, it points beyond itself Votes: 0

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "future perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be. Votes: 0

Love is not some complex, mystical abstraction. It is something accessible and human that we learn through our everyday experience, as often at times of failure as in moments of ecstasy.... Votes: 0

I began as a naturalistic painter. Very quickly I felt the urgent need for a more concise form of expression and an economy of means. I never stopped progressing toward abstraction. Votes: 0

The cartooning was always just an abstraction. It was an income. It was making me famous. It was allowing me to go and do other things that I'd wanted to do. Votes: 0

It does not at first appear that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel more exquisite delight than a farmer who is conducting his team. Votes: 0

I was not ready for abstraction. I clung to earth and her dear shapes, her density, her herbage, her juice. I wanted her volume, and I wanted to hear her throb. Votes: 0

It was only since the turn of the century that one returned to the immense role that abstraction plays in the human mind by its power of concentration upon absolute essentials. Votes: 0

I guess I have no motivation to make an abstract painting, even if they sometimes read as abstract. I think, with abstraction, it's easy to fall into a sort of pastiche. Votes: 0

Contrary to current cynicism about past golden ages, the abstraction known as 'the intelligent layperson' does exist - in the form of millions of folks with a passionate commitment to continuous learning. Votes: 0

Like Midas, the Rationalist is always in the unfortunate position of not being able to touch anything, without transforming it into an abstraction; he can never get a square meal of experience. Votes: 0

In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits. Votes: 0

It is easy now to communicate with people through abstraction, and particularly so in sculpture. Since the whole body reacts to its presence, people become themselves a living part of the whole. Votes: 0

Writing is the hammer & chisel that breaks down the established way of thinking. A concrete event, then an abstraction. An image, then a thought. Finally, writing builds another establishment with the fragments. Votes: 0

I don't have any personal upset at the death penalty as an abstraction, What I do realize is how many mistakes can be made with the way things are being done now. Votes: 0

A bit of advice, don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result. Votes: 0

True leaders have so much power they are willing to give it away. Power is not a fixed, quantifiable sum; instead it is an unlimited abstraction which grows as it is shared. Votes: 0

Sometimes I start in a very realistic fashion, and as I go on from one painting to another of the same kind, it becomes simplified until it can be nothing but abstraction. Votes: 0

Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us. Votes: 0

No one has ever seen the self. It has no visible shape, nor does it occupy measurable space. It is an abstraction, like other abstractions equally elusive: the individual, the mind, the society Votes: 0

Most American cities shop to their best advantage when seen from a height or from a distance, at a point where the ugliness of the buildings dissolves into the beauty of an abstraction. Votes: 0

Things like anatomy and drawing and design and color had pretty much been drop-kicked out of the curriculum in the '70s, when I was studying art, in favor of abstraction and minimalism. Votes: 0

Everything will be all right - you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves. Votes: 0

I'm trying not to delve into my world of abstraction and self-indulgence. But I haven't. When I sit down and I try not to [be abstract], it comes out really forced and awkward. Votes: 0

Willem de Kooning is generally credited for coming out of the painterly gates strong in the forties, revolutionizing art and abstraction and reaching incredible heights by the early fifties, and then tailing off. Votes: 0

I am fully and entirely concentrated on the board. I never even consider my opponent's personality. So far as I am concerned, my opponent might as well be an abstraction or an automaton. Votes: 0

I have this certain vision of the way I want my comics to look; this sort of photographic realism, but with a certain abstraction that comics can give. It's kind of a fine line. Votes: 0

There is no interruption between my older paintings and my cutouts. Just that with an increasing sense of the absolute, and more abstraction, I have achieved a form that is simplified to its essence. Votes: 0

The psychological profiling [of a programmer] is mostly the ability to shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high level. To see something in the small and to see something in the large. Votes: 0

At some level, you have to be able to say, "This is my task." It's in small, local ways that you keep yourself alive and refresh ideas that are always going into dead abstraction. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It took me twenty years to get Steven Parrino's work. From the time I first saw his art, in the mid-eighties, I almost always dismissed it as mannered, Romantic, formulaic, conceptualist-formalist heavy-metal boy-art abstraction. Votes: 0

The individual is the true reality of life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called "society," or the "nation," which is only a collection of individuals. Votes: 0

Mystic equality lies in abstraction, not in having or in doing, which are processes. In function and process, one man, one part, must of necessity be subordinate to another. It is a condition of being. Votes: 0

Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. Votes: 0

Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity. Votes: 0