Quotes about material (2006 quotes, page 3)

“Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.
Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it".
1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Passion , Support , Future , Help

“As a social bond, now one does not find even a faith of the warrior kind, that is, relationships of loyalty and honour. The social bond assumes a utilitarian and economic character; it is an agreement based on convenience and material interest — a type only a merchant would accept.”

Julius Evola (1898–1974) Italian philosopher and esotericist

Gli Uomini e le Rovine (1953), p. 34

Loyalty , Faith

“Aluminium, however, will not stop at downing copper. Before many years have passed it will be engaged in a fierce struggle with iron, and in the latter it will find an adversary not easy to conquer. The issue of the contest will largely depend on whether iron shall be indispensable in electric machinery. This the future alone can decide. The magnetism as exhibited in iron is an isolated phenomenon in nature. What it is that makes this metal behave so radically different from all other materials in this respect has not yet been ascertained, though many theories have been suggested. As regards magnetism, the molecules of the various bodies behave like hollow beams partly filled with a heavy fluid and balanced in the middle in the manner of a see-saw. Evidently some disturbing influence exists in nature which causes each molecule, like such a beam, to tilt either one or the other way. If the molecules are tilted one way, the body is magnetic; if they are tilted the other way, the body is non-magnetic; but both positions are stable, as they would be in the case of the hollow beam, owing to the rush of the fluid to the lower end. Now, the wonderful thing is that the molecules of all known bodies went one way, while those of iron went the other way. This metal, it would seem, has an origin entirely different from that of the rest of the globe. It is highly improbable that we shall discover some other and cheaper material which will equal or surpass iron in magnetic qualities.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

Dependency , Future , Nature , Way

“The great line of demarcation in modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.”

Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) American philosopher

Russell Kirk, " Ten Conservative Principles http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/detail/ten-conservative-principles/" (1993)

People , Nature , Universe , Women

“We all have musts, needs, and wants in our lives, be they material or issue oriented; complete the musts as they are a necessity and forget the wants until the musts do not consume most of your time.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1974

Forgetting , Time

“We all have musts, needs, and wants in our lives, be they material or issue oriented; complete the musts as they are a necessity and forget the wants until the musts do not consume most of your time.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1974

Forgetting , Time

“Feuerbach is the only one who has a serious, critical attitude to the Hegelian dialectic and who has made genuine discoveries in this field. He is in fact the true conqueror of the old philosophy. The extent of his achievement, and the unpretentious simplicity with which he, Feuerbach, gives it to the world, stand in striking contrast to the opposite attitude (of the others). Feuerbach’s great achievement is: (1) The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned;(2) The establishment of true materialism and of real science, by making the social relationship of “man to man” the basic principle of the theory; (3) His opposing of the negation of the negation, which claims to be the absolute positive, the self-supporting positive, positively based on itself.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Source: Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole, p. 64.
Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Religion , Support , Self-confidence , World

“It is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of arms. Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses. Theory is capable of seizing the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp things by the root. But for man the root is man himself. What proves beyond doubt the radicalism of German theory, and thus its practical energy, is that it begins from the resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for man. It ends, therefore, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being—conditions which can hardly be better described than in the exclamation of a Frenchman on the occasion of a proposed tax upon dogs: 'Wretched dogs! They want to treat you like men!'”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)

Dogs , Religion , Men

“Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846), Vol. I, Part 4.

Time , Communication , Nature , Reality

“Where speculation ends — in real life — there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of activity loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of men. Viewed apart from real history, these abstractions have in themselves no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement — the real depiction — of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846), Vol. I, Part 1, [The Materialist Conception of History].

History , Past , Knowledge , Reality

“The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. The social structure and the state are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i.e. as they are effective, produce materially, and are active under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will.
The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of the politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics of a people. Men are the producers of their conception, ideas, etc.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.
Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846)

Religion , Imagination , Law , People

“The weapon of criticism obviously cannot replace the criticism of weapons. Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem, when it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp things by the root, but for man the root is man himself. The clear proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its political energy, is that it proceeds from the decisive positive abolition of religion.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)

Religion , Decision

“The forces of men’s material and perceptual violence mold Woman to dependence upon Man, in every meaning of 'dependence': contingent upon; conditional upon; necessitated by; defined in terms of; incomplete or unreal without; requiring the support or assistance of; being a subordinate part of; being an appurtenance to.”

Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality

Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 77

Support , Men , Parting , Dependency

“Great are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

World

“Mankind is turning increasingly towards fulfilling worldly desires and materialism...”

Mirza Masroor Ahmad (1950) spiritual leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

Virtual Meetings
Source: Virtual Mulaqat with Ahmadi Muslim Women from Kababir https://www.pressahmadiyya.com/press-releases/2021/06/ahmadi-muslim-women-from-kababir-have-honour-of-a-virtual-meeting-with-the-head-of-the-ahmadiyya-muslim-community/, 6 June 2021

“If you must be careless with your possessions, let it be in connection with material things. Your mind is your spiritual estate! Protect and use it with the care to which Divine Royalty is entitled. You were given a will-power for this purpose.”

Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich

Think and Grow Rich (1938) p. 173

“You can take away all of my money…

You can seize my material belongings…

You can try to keep me down…

But you can never take my Spirit…”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Money

“We recognise two varieties of spirit, one of which is called the soul (ψυχή), but the other is greater than the soul, an image and likeness of God: both existed in the first men, that in one sense they might be material (ὑλικοί), and in another superior to matter.”

Tatian Address to the Greeks

Chap. xii.—The two kinds of spirits.
Address to the Greeks

God , Soul , Sense , Men

“Jem touched the parabatai rune on his shoulder, through the thin material of his nightshirt. "I am not alone," he said. "Wherever we are, we are as one.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Imagination , Idea , Fashion

“By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Time

“I understood what he was doing, that he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents, and material excess.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

World , Parent , Falseness

“Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

“Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Peace

“Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Way , Solitude

“Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

“From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew; that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Learning , Personality

“Perfect date material, she thought. A vampire with the social equivalent of road rage.

---Beth about Wrath”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

Rage , Perfection

“The writer must be four people: 1) The nut, the obsede 2) The moron 3) The stylist 4) The critic. 1 supplies the material; 2 lets it come out; 3 is taste; 4 is intelligence.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

People , Intelligence

“Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

“Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

“Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“a person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Source: On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

Change , Personality

“Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

“In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Personality

“Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.”

Idries Shah (1924–1996) writer and Sufi teacher

Source: Sufi Thought and Action

People , Pleasure , World , Suffering

“Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

“Jem knotted his fingers in the material of Will's sleeve. "You are my parabatai," he said, "You said once I could ask anything of you.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American.”

Anthony Bourdain book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Source: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Dreams , Understanding

“This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw material at hand.”

Michael Cunningham book A Home at the End of the World

Source: A Home at the End of the World

Future

“Introspection is a devouring monster. You have to feed it with much material, much experience, many people, many places, many loves, many creations, and then it ceases feeding on you.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love , People

“At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

World , Parent

“Beauty without wit offers nothing but the enjoyment of its material charms, whilst witty ugliness captivates by the charms of the mind, and at last fulfils all the desires of the man it has captivated.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Source: The Story of My Life

Beauty

“A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

The Expanding Universe (1963)
Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Life , Books , Star , Universe

“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfilment.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Progress of Culture Phi Beta Kappa Address (July 18, 1867)
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)

Men , World , Hope

“For where did Dante get the material for his Hell, if not from this actual world of ours?”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

World , Hell

“Ethan: "You think I'm a hero?"
Beth: "Yes."
Ethan: "But lousy husband material?" Like that really mattered to him.
Beth: "Don't sweat it. So was Superman.”

Lucy Monroe (1967)

Source: Satisfaction Guaranteed

Thinking

“But when they kissed goodnight in bed, Therese felt their sudden release, that leap of response in both of them, as if their bodies were of some materials which put together inevitably created desire.”

Patricia Highsmith book The Price of Salt

Source: The Price of Salt

Kiss

“You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Love , Sense

“We spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that prestige and resources and belonging to elite institutions make us better off. We don’t spend enough time thinking about the ways in which those kinds of material advantages limit our options.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Way , Thinking , Time

“It is a wretched thing that the young men of today are so contriving and so proud of their material posessions. Men with contriving hearts are lacking in duty. Lacking in duty, they will have no self-respect.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

Men , Heart

“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."

(Acceptance speech,, November 17, 2010)”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

Books , World , Beauty

“I refer of course to the soaring wonder of the age known as the Eiffel Tower. Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent, and gloriously pointless all at the same time.”

Bill Bryson book At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Source: At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Age , History , Time

“I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.”

Vikram Seth (1952) Indian writer

World , Nostalgia , Future

“We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human being, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or material, results in good. You'll see.”

Louise Erdrich book The Round House

Source: The Round House

Evil

“Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

Source: The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty

“Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 3, "The lazy controller", page 46 (ISBN 9780141033570).

Intelligence , Memory

“On the theft of his material by Denis Leary: "I have a scoop for you. I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

People

“One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted —
One need not be a House —
The Brain has Corridors — surpassing
Material Place”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Selected Poems

Housing

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Personality

“Creative work is more accurately a machine that digs down and finds stuff, emotional stuff that will someday be raw material that can be used to produce more stuff, stuff like itself - clay to be available for future use.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

Source: Bicycle Diaries

Future

“I begin with the young. We older ones are used up but my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at all these men and boys! What material! With you and I, we can make a new world.”

Adolf Hitler book Hitler's Letters and Notes

Adolf Hitler c. 1933; as quoted in Hitler Speaks http://books.google.com/books?id=PndurCstDZMC&pg=PA251 (1939), by Hermann Rauschning, London: Thornton Butterworth, p. 247.
Misattributed
Source: Hitler's Letters and Notes
Context: I am beginning with the young. We older ones are used up. Yes, we are old already. We are rotten to the marrow. We have no unrestrained instincts left. We are cowardly and sentimental. We are bearing the burden of a humiliating past, and have in our blood the dull recollection of serfdom and servility. But my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at these young men and boys! What material! With them, I can make a new world.

Men , World , Boy

“Vampires smiled for many reasons, but when a vampire male smiled at you from this distance with that kind of look in his eyes it was done for one purpose only: to impress. Look at my big teeth. I’m an apex predator. My genetic material is awesome.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Clean Sweep

Smile

“The two men who have done the greatest harm to the world are Christ and Columbus. Christ taught us guilt and sacrifice, to live only in the other world, and Columbus discovered America and materialism.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Men , World , Christ

“You can present the material, but you can't make me care.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection

“The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

July 14, 1852
Journals (1838-1859)

Youth , Age

“The less you are driven by what goes on in this material world, the more you will pay attention to its details.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

29 October 2010 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/29053579357
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy
Source: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

World

“It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Laughter

“Industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation.”

Adolf Hitler book Mein Kampf

Source: Mein Kampf

Lie , Communication

“With a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Marriage

“You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Love , Money , Sense

“There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon (1966)

Money , People , Time

“Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Art , Universe

“The material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you, including yourself.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: The Portable Henry Rollins

“Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They are not like aches or wounds; they are more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there is not enough material.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Babylon Revisited

"Babylon Revisited"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Family , Family

“Call me a schoolmarm, but few things make me angrier than people not taking good care of library materials.”

Tim Gunn (1953) American actor and fashion consultant

Source: Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making It Work

People

“Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: First, nature, which works upon us by its laws; second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials; third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world. Of those three components only one, the medium, is material.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in Hans Hofmann (1963) by William Chapin Seitz, p. 15
1960s

World , Law , Nature

“Tombed in the solid night of starless space;
From nearest living orb so far removed,
That light, of all material things most swift,
Myriads on myriads of earth's years must speed,
Ere the mere outskirts of that Stygian gloom,
If ever, it might reach,-at rest eterne,
Lies the cold wreck of an extinguished sun.
Prime glory once of all heaven's radiant host;
Body, for soul of purest light most fit-
'Tween its first darkening, and eclipse complete,
Streamed years which might eternity appear;
While into ether, like the particles,
Invisible, which are the breath of flowers,
The mighty bulk its softer elements
Still ever was exhaling. As when flesh
And sinew of earth's monster Mastodon,
By the slow wasting of the elements,
All are dissolved, and hard, enduring bones
Alone remain,- even so, of this immense,-
When, by the ocean waves of centuries,
Millions succeeding millions, worn away,-
The adamantine skeleton alone,
In darkness, silence, utter solitude,
A ruin for eternity, was left.”

Edwin Atherstone (1788–1872) British writer

Israel in Egypt, Book the First (1861)

Soul , Flowers , Solitude , Light

“Under the world view possessed by medieval scholars, the path of learning was a path of self-deprecation. … An opposite conception comes in with Bacon’s “knowledge is power.” If the aim of knowledge is domination, it is hardly to be supposed that the possessors of knowledge will be indifferent to their importance. On the contrary, they begin to swell; the seek triumphs in the material world (knowledge being meanwhile necessarily degraded to skills) which inflate their egotism and self-consideration. Such is a brief history of how knowledge passes from a means of spiritual redemption to a basis for intellectual pride.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 72.

World , History , Knowledge , Learning

“Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. […] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"Double Trouble", pp. 38–40
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

Books , Hope , Imagination , Nature

“Get it down quickly, don't worry about the background. Just go for the tonal values. You see? When you look at it, and above all when you see how to render it as you see it, thats is, in such a way that its make the same impression on the viewer as it does on you, you don't look for, you don't see the lines on the paper over there, do you? And then, when you look at the whole thing you don't try to count the scales on the salmon, of course you don't. You see them as little silver pearls against grey and pink – isn't thats right? – look at the pink of the salmon, with the bone appearing white in the centre and then grays, like the shades of mother of pearl. And the grapes, now do you count each? No, of course not. What strikes you is their clear, amber colour and the bloom which models the form by softening it. What you have to decide with the cloth is where the highlights come and then the planes which are not in the direct light. Halftones are for the magasin pittoresque engravers. The folds will come by themselves if you put them in the proper place. Ah! M. Ingres, there's the man! We're all just children. There's the one who knew how to paint materials! Ask Bracquemond [Paris' artist and print-maker]. Above all, keep your colours fresh. [instructing his new protegee, the Spanish young woman-painter Eva Gonzales, circa 1869]”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

Manet, recorded by Philippe Burty, as cited in Manet by Himself, ed. Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Little Brown 2000, London; p. 52
1850 - 1875

Children , Way , Light , Appearance

“Like proselytization, desecrating and demolishing the temples of non-Muslims is also central to Islam…. India too suffered terribly as thousands of Hindu temples and sacred edifices disappeared in northern India by the time of Sikandar Lodi and Babur. Will Durant rightly laments in the Story of Civilization that "We can never know from looking at India today, what grandeur and beauty it once possessed". In Delhi, after the demolition of twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples, the materials of which were utilized to construct the Quwwat-ul-Islam masjid, it was after 700 years that the Birla Mandir could be constructed in 1930s. Sita Ram Goel has brought out two excellent volumes on Hindu Temples: What happened to them. These informative volumes give a list of Hindu shrines and their history of destruction in the medieval period on the basis of Muslim evidence itself. This of course does not cover all the shrines razed. Muslims broke temples recklessly. Those held in special veneration by Hindus like the ones at Somnath, Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura, were special targets of Muslims, and whenever the Hindus could manage to rebuild their shrines at these places, they were again destroyed by Muslim rulers. From the time of Mahmud of Ghazni who destroyed the temples at Somnath and Mathura to Babur who struck at Ayodhya to Aurangzeb who razed the temples at Kashi Mathura and Somnath, the story is repeated again and again.”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Beauty , History , Suffering , Time

“I have been fortunate enough to lead.... an uneventful life. Only on very rare occasions have I ever left Bologna, my native city, and the surrounding province of Emilia. Only twice, for instance, have I been abroad... Besides, I speak only my native language, as you see, and read only Italian periodicals... When I was in my early twenties, my highest ambition was to go abroad study art in Paris.... the material difficulties involved were too great, and I was obliged to remain in Italy. Later I had too many responsibilities, with my teaching and my family [his sisters he lived with] and never managed to go abroad.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

Source: 1945 - 1964, Interview, 1960, p. 106

Life , Family , Art , Sister

“WE MUST DESTROY ALL PASSÉIST CLOTHES, and everything about them which is tight-fitting, colourless, funereal, decadent, boring and unhygienic. As far as materials are concerned, we must abolish: wishywashy, pretty-pretty, gloomy, and neutral colours, along with patterns composed of lines, checks and spots.”

Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) Italian artist

(Manuscript, 1913); as quoted at dekorera.tumblr: Futurist manifesto of men's clothing http://dekorera.tumblr.com/post/3212646425/futurist-manifesto-of-mens-clothing-by-giacomo
Futurist Manifesto of Men's clothing,' 1913/1914

Clothes

“Audiences who have been forced to wade through the thick middle-class padding of more expensively made movies to get to the action enjoy the nose-thumbing at "good taste" of cheap movies that stick to the raw materials. At some basic level they like the pictures to be cheaply done, they enjoy the crudeness; it’s a breather, a vacation from proper behavior and good taste and required responses. Patrons of burlesque applaud politely for the graceful erotic dancer but go wild for the lewd lummox who bangs her big hips around. That’s what they go to burlesque for.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Behavior

“The winter oak… is very useful in buildings but when in a moist place it takes in water to its centre… and so it rots. The Turkey oak and the beech both… take in moisture to their centre and soon decay. White and black poplar, as well as willow, linden, and the agnus castus… are of great service from their stiffness. …they are a convenient material to use in carving.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 9

Water , Winter

“[ Impressionism was] the beginning of a cult devoted to the material on the canvas – the actual pigment..”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

posthumous

“Laura was born an authentic artist, and, coming together, my job was to help her bring all of it forward and out. […] The artist is a shaman; a wounded healer. We have wounds that we want to bring forth through the material. It's joyful, it's painful, but not painful in a bad way. And when you do that, you also heal people in the audience.”

Sandra Seacat (1936) American acting teacher and actress

As heard in "Laura Dern and Sandra Seacat: Hollywood Mentors," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpqQwfq5tqg The Hollywood Reporter (February 18, 2015)

Pain , People , Way , Help

“What plethora of material goods can possibly atone for a waking life so humanly belittling, if not degrading, as the push-button tasks left to human performers?”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

Source: The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970), p. 352

Life

“Death is a release from and an end of all pains: beyond it our sufferings cannot extend: it restores us to the peaceful rest in which we lay before we were born. If anyone pities the dead, he ought also to pity those who have not been born. Death is neither a good nor a bad thing, for that alone which is something can be a good or a bad thing: but that which is nothing, and reduces all things to nothing, does not hand us over to either fortune, because good and bad require some material to work upon. Fortune cannot take ahold of that which Nature has let go, nor can a man be unhappy if he is nothing.”
Mors dolorum omnium exsolutio est et finis ultra quem mala nostra non exeunt, quae nos in illam tranquillitatem in qua antequam nasceremur iacuimus reponit. Si mortuorum aliquis miseretur, et non natorum misereatur. Mors nec bonum nec malum est; id enim potest aut bonum aut malum esse quod aliquid est; quod uero ipsum nihil est et omnia in nihilum redigit, nulli nos fortunae tradit. Mala enim bonaque circa aliquam uersantur materiam: non potest id fortuna tenere quod natura dimisit, nec potest miser esse qui nullus est.

Seneca the Younger book To Marcia

From Ad Marciam De Consolatione (Of Consolation, To Marcia), cap. XIX, line 5
In L. Anneus Seneca: Minor Dialogues (1889), translated by Aubrey Stewart, George Bell and Sons (London), p. 190.
Other works

Death , Pain , Peace , Nature

“From infinite probable acts, comma, only one can be physically experienced as a rule, period. The dream world operates as a creative situation in which probable acts are instantly materialized, laid out in actual or symbolic form. From these you then choose the most appropriate for physical expression.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 669, p. 387
The Nature of Personal Reality (1974)

World , Dreams

“Cézanne showed us forms living in the reality of light; Picasso gives us a material report of their real life in the mind. He establishes a free, mobile perspective, in such a way that the shrewd mathematician Maurice Princet has deduced an entire geometry.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Note sur la Peinture (1910)

Life , Way , Reality , Light

“The first question we should face is: What is the aim of a physical theory? To this question diverse answers have been made, but all of them may be reduced to two main principles:
"A physical theory," certain logicians have replied, "has for its object the explanation of a group of laws experimentally established."
"A physical theory," other thinkers have said, "is an abstract system whose aim is to summarize and classify logically a group of experimental laws without claiming to explain these laws…
Now these two questions — Does there exist a material reality distinct from sensible appearances? and What is the nature of reality? — do not have their source in experimental method, which is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them. The resolution of these questions transcends the methods used by physics; it is the object of metaphysics.
Therefore, if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics…
Now, to make physical theories depend on metaphysics is surely not the way to let them enjoy the privilege of universal consent.”

Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) French physicist, historian of science

Notice sur les Titres et Travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem rédigée par lui-même lors de sa candidature à l'Académie des sciences (mai 1913), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906)

Law , Way , Question , Nature

“This ideal University of Life … would never take the importance of culture for granted. It would know that culture is kept alive by a constant respectful questioning—not by an excessive and snobbish attitude of respect. Therefore, rather than leaving it hanging why one was reading Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, an ideal course covering nineteenth-century literature would ask plainly “What is it that adultery ruins in a marriage?” Students in the ideal University of Life would end up knowing much the same material as their colleagues in other institutions, they would simply have learned it under a very different set of headings.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

“Reclaiming the Intellectual Life for Posterity,” Liberal Education, vol. 95, no. 2 http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-sp09/le-sp09_MyView.cfm

Life , Marriage , Literature , Question

“Neoclassical economic theory forms the central discourse and behavioral model of contemporary management education. Drawing on research and insights from game theory and behavioral economics we have argued that many of the core assumptions underlying this model are flawed. While we cannot say that the widespread reliance on the Homo economicus model has caused the highly level of observed managerial malfeasance, it may well have, and it surely does not act as a healthy influence on managerial morality. Students have learned this flawed model and in their capacity as corporate managers, doubtless act daily in conformance with it. This, in turn, may have contributed to the weakening of socially functional values and norms like honesty, integrity, self-restraint, reciprocity and fairness, to the detriment of the health of the enterprise. Simultaneously, this perspective has legitimized, or at least not delegitimized, such behaviors as material greed and optimizing with guile. We noted that this model has become highly institutionalized in business education. Fortunately, we believe that the potential for moving away from this flawed model is significant and thus can end this chapter on a more optimistic note for the future of business education.”

Rakesh Khurana (1967) American business academic

Herbert Gintis and Rakesh Khurana. " What Happened When Homo Economicus Entered Business School https://evonomics.com/what-happens-when-you-introduce-homo-economicus-into-business/," in: evonomics.com, July 14, 2016.

Health , Education , Behavior , Game

“I have been working with silicone for years. While still studying, I painted on unusual materials, for example on a soft felt. I like material that easily surrenders – you can tame them and "go out" to the third dimension, and at the same time sanctify something that is considered ordinary. Once, I painted on sponges over twenty centimeters long, which create a great illusion of sandstone.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

Tomasz Vetulani o Holandii, niskim kraju http://www.nto.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110605/REPORTAZ01/762330357, nto.pl, 5 June 2011 (in Polish)

Study , Time , Painting

“There is nothing supernatural about the process of self-organization to states of higher entropy; it is a general property of systems, regardless of their materials and origin. It does not violate the Second Law of thermodynamics since the decrease in entropy within an open system is always offset by the increase of entropy in its surroundings.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 44.

Law

“I was looking for some sort of systematic way of getting down these subjective images and I had always admired, particularly admired the early Italian painters who proceeded the Renaissance and I very much liked some of the altarpieces in which there would be, for example the story of Christ told in a series of boxes... And it seemed to me this was a very rational method of conveying something. So I decided to try it. But I was not interested in telling, in giving something its chronological sequence. What I wanted to do was give something, to present what material I was interested in simultaneously so that you would get an instantaneous impact from it. So, I made boxes..”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Variant: I was looking for some sort of systematic way of getting down these subjective images and I had always admired, particularly admired the early Italian painters who proceeded the Renaissance and I very much liked some of the altarpieces in which there would be, for example the story of Christ told in a series of boxes... And it seemed to me this was a very rational method of conveying something. So I decided to try it. But I was not interested in telling, in giving something its chronological sequence. What I wanted to do was give something, to present what material I was interested in simultaneously so that you would get an instantaneous impact from it. So I made boxes..
Source: 1960s, Interview with Dorothy Seckler, 1967, p. 55-59.

Way , Christ , Box

“The American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.”

James Truslow Adams (1878–1949) American writer and historian

The Epic of America (2nd ed., Greenwood Press, 1931), p. 405

Dreams , Past

“Religious ritual invariably offers a sacrificial display of commitment to supernatural agents that is materially costly and emotionally convincing. Such ritual conveys willingness to cooperate with a community of believers by signaling an open-ended promise to help others whenever there is true need. These expensive and sincere displays underscore belief that the gods are always vigilant and will never allow society to suffer those who cheat on their promises. Such a deep devotion to the in-group habitually generates intolerance toward out-groups. This, in turn, leads to constant rivalry and unending development of new and syncretic religious forms.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 16
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

God , Communication , Suffering , Help

Quotes about material page 3

Quotes about material
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