“On the geometric level, we see certain physical elements repeated endlessly, combined in an almost endless variety of combinations… It is puzzling to realize that the elements, which seem like elementary building blocks, keep varying, and are different every time that they occur …. If the elements are different every time that they occur, evidently then, it cannot be the elements themselves which are repeating in a building or town; these so-called elements cannot be the ultimate "atomic" constituents of space.”

— Christopher Alexander , book The Timeless Way of Building

Cited in: Peter Coad (1992, p. 152)
The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

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Christopher Alexander 6

architect 1936

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“Look more carefully…to find out what it really is that is repeating there …. Beyond its elements, each building [or town] is defined by certain patterns of relationships among the elements…. These relationships are not extra, but necessary to the elements… The elements themselves are patterns of relationships.”

Christopher Alexander book The Timeless Way of Building

Cited in: Peter Coad (1992, p. 152) About To find patterns, what does one look for?
The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

“One begins to think with that new building block, rather than with littler pieces. And finally, the things which seem like elements dissolve, and leave a fabric of relationships behind, which is the stuff that actually repeats itself, and gives the structure to a building or a town.”

Christopher Alexander book The Timeless Way of Building

Cited in: Peter Coad (1992, p. 152) About what happens when one finds a pattern?
The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

“The world of experience, both physical and psychic, is entirely composed of elements - spatial, tactile, accoustical, thermal, etc. Combinations of these elements make up different "phenomena", both psychic and physical. If the law of causality, inferred for all these phenomena - i. e. for the world of elements connected by various relations - is applicable to "things in themselves" serving as an immediate link between "phenomena" and "things", it is clear that "phenomena" and "things in themselves" are of the same nature. "Things in themselves" would then represent a direct continuation of the world of empirical elements and in fact would be only combinations of elements.”

Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) Physician, philosopher, writer

Alexander Bogdanov, cited in: ‎James Patrick Scanlan, (1965). : Pre-revolutionary philosophy and theology. Philosophers in exile. Marxists and Communists. p. 398

“We want to be a peace-loving element among the nations. We cannot repeat that often enough.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech in Berlin (30 January 1936), quoted in The Times (26 September 1939), p. 9
1930s

“The chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth’s crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)

“1. Small particles called atoms exist and compose all matter; 2. They are indivisible and indestructible; 3. Atoms of the same chemical element have the same chemical properties and do not transmute or change into different elements.”

John Dalton (1766–1844) English chemist, meteorologist and physicist

A New System of Chemical Philosophy, Part I http://books.google.com/books?id=Wp7QAAAAMAAJ (1808) as quoted by Richard Reeves, A Force of Nature The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford (2008)

“They are trained to combine familiar elements into new forms.”

Roger Smith (executive) (1925–2007) CEO

“Through the constant revolution of the fifth element, with all contained therein, the four elements are forced to move and to change their respective positions, so that fire and air are driven into the water, and again these three elements enter the depth of the earth. Thus are the elements mixed together; and when they return to their respective places, parts of the earth, in quitting their places, move together with the water, the air and the fire. In this whole process the elements act and react upon each other. The elements intermixed, are then combined, and form at first various kinds of vapours; afterwards the several kinds of minerals, every species of plants, and many species of living beings, according to the relative proportion of the constituent parts. All transient beings have their origin in the elements, into which again they resolve when their existence comes to an end. The elements themselves are subject to being transformed from one into another; for although one substance is common to all, substance without form is in reality impossible, just as the physical form of these transient beings cannot exist without substance.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part I, pp.294-295 (1881) Tr. Friedlander

“The building blocks of poetry itself are elements if fiction -fable, 'image', metaphor-all the material if the nonliteral.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

'Rhymes's Reason':a guide to English Verse Yale University Press, 1981

“Belief is the result of the proportion, whatever it he, in which the many elements which go to make the human being are combined.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: Belief is the result of the proportion, whatever it he, in which the many elements which go to make the human being are combined. In some the grosser nature preponderates; they believe largely in their stomachs, in the comforts and conveniences of life, and being of such kind, so long as these are not threatened, they gravitate steadily towards the earth. Numerically this is the largest class of believers, with very various denominations indeed; bearing the names of every faith beneath the sky, and composing the conservative elements in them, and therefore commonly persons of much weight in established systems. But they are what I have called them: their hearts are where I said they were, and as such interests are commonly selfish, and self separates instead of unites, they are not generally powerful against any heavy trial. Others of keener susceptibility are yet volatile, with slight power of continuance, and fly from attraction to attraction in the current of novelty. Others of stronger temper gravitate more slowly, but combine more firmly, and only disunite again when the idea or soul of the body into which they form dies out, or they fall under the influence of some very attractive force indeed. It may be doubted, indeed, whether a body which is really organised by a living idea can lose a healthy member except by violence.

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