In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist's obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.
Alberto Giacometti

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.
Alfred North Whitehead

In modern Russia, you have no official, formal assessment of this past. Nobody in any Russian document has said that the policy of the Soviet government was criminal, that it was terrible. No one has ever said this.
Ryszard Kapuscinski

In my own recent String Trio I attempt to superimpose two quite different sets of formal strategies, both of which, ultimately, refer back to historical precedent.
Brian Ferneyhough

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Albert Einstein

Jim, I'm not aware of any formal requests from the Senate Judiciary Committee for these kinds of documents.
Alberto Gonzales

Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face - for me that would be deserving of an award.
Elfriede Jelinek

Marlon was more of a formal zoo director type.
Jim Fowler

My father had very little formal education.
Daniel Berrigan

My knowledge of science came from being with Carl, not from formal academic training. Carl gave me a thrilling tutorial in science and math that lasted the 20 years we were together.
Ann Druyan

My mother, who was professional schoolteacher, was particularly concerned about our formal education and even went so far as to start a private school together with some other parents so that our intellectual needs would be met.
Robert B. Laughlin

My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces.
Harrison Birtwistle

My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc.
David Bohm

Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.
Francoise Sagan

Or he can work it out as a metrical and formal exercise, but he will be disappointed in its content. The New Year's prospect fairly chills his daunting breast.
John C. Ransom

Or the other process that is important is that I compress longer sections of composed music, either found or made by myself, to such an extent that the rhythm becomes a timbre, and formal subdivisions become rhythm.
Karlheinz Stockhausen

Over the next two years UNICEF will focus on improving access to and the quality of education to provide children who have dropped out of school or who work during school hours the opportunity to gain a formal education!
Roger Moore

People aren't used to thinking of cultural forms spreading out across the full range of formal interactions - or what is called the "text" in literary terms.
Tony Conrad

Religious poetry, civic poetry, lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man's expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid.
Salvatore Quasimodo

So I used formal techniques to make the film more perceptive emotionally.
Alain Resnais