Abstract Quotes

Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Happiness, Money, Human

Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division; and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.
Joseph Stalin

Rich, Poor, Between

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
Pablo Picasso

Art, Reality, Start

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Understand, After, Happens

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
Al Capp

Art, Product, Utterly

To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
Honore de Balzac

Politics, Nothing, Thought

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Evil, Ability, Humans

We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.
Salvador Dali

Good, Art, Hungry

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can't solve the equations, directly in the abstract.
Stephen Hawking

Science, Universe, Solve

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.
Henry A. Kissinger

War, Why, Rather

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was.
Jackson Pollock

End, Mean, While

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.
John Keats

Love, Beauty, Blame

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.
Epicurus

Men, Justice, Between

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.
Saul Alinsky

Change, Means, Movement

How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.
Joseph Joubert

Themselves, Create, Profound

All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
Denis Diderot

Nothing, Study, Between

Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Beauty, Future, Wisdom

I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much.
Newt Gingrich

Leader, Natural

In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes.
Theodor Adorno

Wrong, Universal, Concrete

I am searching for abstract ways of expressing reality, abstract forms that will enlighten my own mystery.
Eric Cantona

Reality, Ways, Mystery

None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace.
Theodor Adorno

Peace, Eternal, Closer

Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.
Paul Engle

Words, Head, Written

I get satisfaction out of seeing stuff that makes real change in the real world. We need a lot more of that and a lot less abstract stuff.
Temple Grandin

Change, Real, Makes

Abstract Expressionism - the first American movement to have a worldwide influence - was remarkably short-lived: It heated up after World War II and was all but done for by 1960 (although visit any art school today and you'll find a would-be Willem de Kooning).
Jerry Saltz

War, Art, Today

Think of an abstract painting as very, very low relief - a thing, not a picture.
Jerry Saltz

Picture, Painting, Relief

I think that ideas exist outside of ourselves. I think somewhere, we're all connected off in some very abstract land. But somewhere between there and here ideas exist.
David Lynch

Between, Here, Off

To me, a story can be both concrete and abstract, or a concrete story can hold abstractions. And abstractions are things that really can't be said so well with words.
David Lynch

Words, Said, Story

Yes, I did, I mean I painted er, in a kind of abstract expressionist way, because of course that was exciting.
David Hockney

Mean, Exciting, Yes

You're assisting the audience to understand; you're giving them a bridge or an access. And if you don't give them that, if you keep it more abstract, it's almost more pure. It's a cooler thing.
Jim Henson

Giving, Give, Understand

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Men, Best, Knowledge

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