Source: Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), p. 13
“It is useless to seek the soul of things beneath their surface, for their surface is their soul.”
“The world is content with setting right the surface of things.”
Discourse VIII, pt. 8.
The Idea of a University (1873)
“The surface of things gives enjoyment, their interiority gives life.”
Written note in Mondrian's sketchbook around 1911; quoted in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co.,1964, p. 11
1910's
1973
1968 - 1974, Electric chair quote
Source: Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987), selected by Neil Printz; as quoted in Andy Warhol, retrospective, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467
“Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.”
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Thursday
“Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.”
VI, 3
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI
The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Context: Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only dimension, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it became. Today, for instance, we may know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did, and yet, it increasingly seems they knew something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us.
