Quotes about plastic

A collection of quotes on the topic of plastic, form, use, likeness.

Quotes about plastic

Nikki Sixx photo
Rick Riordan photo
Georgia O'Keeffe photo
Piet Mondrian photo
Joseph Goebbels photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“Of the complete biological inferiority of the negro there can be no question—he has anatomical features consistently varying from those of other stocks, & always in the direction of the lower primates... Equally inferior—& perhaps even more so—is the Australian black stock, which differs widely from the real negro... In dealing with these two black races, there is only one sound attitude for any other race (be it white, Indian, Malay, Polynesian, or Mongolian) to take—& that is to prevent admixture as completely & determinedly as it can be prevented, through the establishment of a colour-line & the rigid forcing of all mixed offspring below that line. I am in accord with the most vehement & vociferous Alabaman or Mississippian on that point … Other racial questions are wholly different in nature—involving wide variations unconnected with superiority or inferiority. Only an ignorant dolt would attempt to call a Chinese gentleman—heir to one of the greatest artistic & philosophic traditions in the world—an "inferior" of any sort... & yet there are potent reasons, based on wide physical, mental, & cultural differences, why great numbers of the Chinese ought not to mix into the Caucasian fabric, or vice versa. It is not that one race is any better than any other, but that their whole respective heritages are so antipodal as to make harmonious adjustment impossible. Members of one race can fit into another only through the complete eradication of their own background-influences—& even then the adjustment will always remain uneasy & imperfect if the newcomer's physical aspect froms a constant reminder of his outside origin. Therefore it is wise to discourage all mixtures of sharply differentiated races—though the color-line does not need to be drawn as strictly as in the case of the negro, since we know that a dash or two of Mongolian or Indian or Hindoo or some such blood will not actually injure a white stock biologically.... As a matter of fact, most of the psychological race-differences which strike us so prominently are cultural rather than biological. If one could take a Japanese infant, alter his features to the Anglo-Saxon type through plastic surgery, & place him with an American family in Boston for rearing—without telling him that he is not an American—the chances are that in 20 years the result would be a typical American youth with very few instincts to distinguish him from his pure Nordic college-mates. The same is true of other superior alien races including the Jew—although the Nazis persist in acting on a false biological conception. If they were wise in their campaign to get rid of Jewish cultural influences (& a great deal can be said for such a campaign, when the dominance of the Aryan tradition is threatened as in Germany & New York City), they would not emphasize the separatism of the Jew but would strive to make him give up his separate culture & lose himself in the German people. It wouldn't hurt Germany—or alter its essential physical type—to take in all the Jews it now has.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

However, that wouldn't work in Poland or New York City, where the Jews are of an inferior strain, & so numerous that they would essentially modify the physical type.
Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (22 November 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 77
Non-Fiction, Letters

Cate Blanchett photo

“You know you've made it when you've been moulded in miniature plastic. But you know what children do with Barbie dolls - it's a bit scary, actually.”

Cate Blanchett (1969) Australian actress

11 Amazing Quotes From Cate Blanchett, Marie Claire, 13 November 2014 https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/news-and-views/celebrity/a/25503850/11-amazing-quotes-from-cate-blanchett/,

Brian W. Aldiss photo
John Scalzi photo
Joseph Stella photo
Sigourney Weaver photo
Anthony de Mello photo

“Whatever is truly alive must die. Look at the flowers; only plastic flowers never die.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Flow
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

Brian W. Aldiss photo
Frank Popper photo

“One of the main reasons for my interest early on in the art and technology relationship was that during my studies of movement and light in art I was struck by the technical components in this art. Contrary to most, if not all, specialists in the field who put the stress on purely plastic issues and in the first place on the constructivist tradition, I was convinced that the technical and technological elements played a decisive part in this art. One almost paradoxical experience was my encounter with the kinetic artist and author of the book Constructivism, George Rickey, and my discovery of the most subtle technical movements in his mobile sculptures. But what seemed to me still more decisive for my option towards the art and technology problematic was the encounter in the early 1950s with artists like Nicholas Schöffer and Frank Malina whose works were based on some first hand or second hand scientific knowledge and who effectively or symbolically employed contemporary technological elements that gave their works a prospective cultural meaning. The same sentiment prevailed in me when I encountered similar artistic endeavors from the 1950s onwards in the works of Piotr Kowalski, Roy Ascott and many others which confirmed me in the aesthetic option I had taken, particularly when I discovered that this option was not antinomic (contradictory) to another aspect of the creative works of the time, i. e. spectator participation.”

Frank Popper (1918) French art historian

Source: Joseph Nechvatal. in: " Origins of Virtualism: An Interview with Frank Popper http://www.mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Popper.pdf," in: Media Art History, 2004.

Derek Humphry photo
Plato photo
Guillaume Apollinaire photo

“Geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer.”

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) French poet

La géométrie est aux arts plastiques ce que la grammaire est à l'art de l'écrivain.
Les peintres cubistes (1913), reprinted in Oeuvres en prose complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1991) vol. 2, p. 11; translation from Lionel Abel (trans.) The Cubist Painters (New York: Wittenborn, 1949) p. 13.

Theo Jansen photo
Austin Gallagher photo
Scott Westerfeld photo
Charlie Higson photo
Scott Adams photo

“Life is half delicious yogurt, half crap, and your job is to keep the plastic spoon in the yogurt.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Dilbert Blog, Sleepless in California, 2006-07-21, http://web.archive.org/20060814050102/dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/07/sleepless_in_ca.html, 2006-08-14 http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/07/sleepless_in_ca.html,

Susan Elizabeth Phillips photo
William Faulkner photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Eoin Colfer photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Courtney Love photo

“I don’t need any plastic in my body to validate me as a woman.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist
Andy Warhol photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Julio Cortázar photo
Groucho Marx photo
Elizabeth Wurtzel photo
Jeannette Walls photo
David Sedaris photo
Deb Caletti photo
Rick Riordan photo
Ani DiFranco photo
Holly Black photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Fernand Léger photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo
Joan Rivers photo

“I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

On her plastic surgeries, quoted in The New York Times, 2008 (republished in The New York Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/joan-rivers-top-10-jokes-celebs-plastic-surgery-article-1.1928398#ixzz3CWeoRaTP

Edward Hopper photo

“I am interested primarily in the vast field of experience and sensation which neither literature nor a purely plastic art deals with.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

Letter to Charles Sawyer of Addison Gallery of Art October 19 , 1939
1911 - 1940

Philip K. Dick photo

“matter is plastic in the face of mind.”

VALIS (1981)

Karl Denninger photo
Piet Mondrian photo
Piet Mondrian photo
Daniel Handler photo
Fernand Léger photo
Piet Mondrian photo
Theo van Doesburg photo
Bill Whittle photo

“Celebrities are people who spend more time in the plastic surgery clinic than they do outside trying to maintain an image of youth, glamour, and relevance, all while calling President Trump a narcissist.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

"Hot Mic - Hollywood Hypocrites" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuxIdfyKzho (11 July 2017)
2010s

Theo van Doesburg photo
Theo van Doesburg photo
Fernand Léger photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo

“Many thanks for your letter and the Gauguin woodcuts... One can see, incidentally, that Gauguin had Persian miniatures, Indian batik and Chinese art in his very blood. The shapes of the birds and the horse show that clearly. But although it looks very well, Gauguin can't stimulate us present-day artists much. We need a direct route from life to plastic form. And we get it by perpetually drawing everything we see.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), Frauenkirch, 29 November 1920; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 224-225
1920's

Aron Ra photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Henry Adams photo
Piet Mondrian photo
Alexander Calder photo
Alexander Calder photo

“Therefore, why not plastic forms in motion?... one can compose motions.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1930s - 1950s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture', (1933)

Theo van Doesburg photo
Piet Mondrian photo
Theo Jansen photo
Piet Mondrian photo

“After your high-handed improvement(?) of 'Neo-plasticism' any co-operation is quite impossible for me... For the rest sans rancune - Piet Mondriaan.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of Mondrian in a letter to Van Doesburg, 4 Dec. 1927; as cited in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, by H.L.C. Jaffé http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01.pdf; J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956, p. 27
Mondrian's answer to Theo van Doesburg's retrospective article in 'De Stijl' magazine in 1929, where he wrote: 'By the lively and most articulate evolution the principles, developed mainly by P. Mondriaan in 'De Stijl' could not any longer be considered as generally characteristic of the opinion of the group.'
1920's

Kathy Griffin photo
Eduardo Torroja photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo

“Under the warm breath of religious faith all social institutions become plastic.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Introduction, p.xii

“In similar fashion we may approach the personality and induce the individual to reveal his way of organizing experience by giving him a field (objects, materials, experiences) with relatively little structure and cultural patterning so that the personality can project upon that plastic field his way of seeing life, his meanings, significances, patterns, and especially his feelings, Thus we elicit a projection of the individual's private world, because he has to organize the field, interpret the material, and react affectively to it. More specifically, a projection method for study of personality involves the presentation of a stimulus-situation designed or chosen because it will mean to the subject, not what the experimenter has arbitrarily decided it should mean (as in most psychological experiments using standardized stimuli in order to be “objective”), but rather whatever it must mean to the personality who gives it, or imposes it, his private, idiosyncratic meaning and organization. The subject then will respond to his meaning of the presented stimulus-situation by some form of action and feeling that is expressive of his personality.”

Lawrence K. Frank (1890–1968) American cyberneticist

Source: Projective methods for the study of personality (1939), p. 402-403; As cited in: Edwin Inglee Megargee, Charles Donald Spielberger (1992) Personality assessment in America: a retrospective on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Society for Personality Assessment. p. 20-21

Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Ray Comfort photo
Alexander Calder photo
Susannah Constantine photo
Woody Allen photo
Piet Mondrian photo

“You should remember that my things are still intended to be paintings, that is to say, they are plastic representations, in and by themselves, not part of a building. Furthermore, they have been made in a small room. Also, that I use subdued colours for the time being, adapting myself to the present surroundings and to the outer world; this does not mean that I should not prefer a pure colouring. Otherwise you might think that I contradict myself in my work.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of Mondrian in a letter to Theo van Doesburg, 13 Feb. 1917; as cited in 'Stijl' catalogue, 1951, p. 72; in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, by H.L.C. Jaffé http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01.pdf; J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956, pp 13-14
1910's

Piet Mondrian photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo
Ornette Coleman photo
Lorin Morgan-Richards photo
Camille Paglia photo

“The sixteenth century transformed Middle English into modern English. Grammar was up for grabs. People made up vocabulary and syntax as they went along. Not until the eighteenth century would rules of English usage appear. Shakespearean language is a bizarre super-tongue, alien and plastic, twisting, turning, and forever escaping. It is untranslatable, since it knocks Anglo-Saxon root words against Norman and Greco-Roman importations sweetly or harshly, kicking us up and down rhetorical levels with witty abruptness. No one in real life ever spoke like Shakespeare’s characters. His language does not “make sense,” especially in the greatest plays. Anywhere from a third to a half of every Shakespearean play, I conservatively estimate, will always remain under an interpretive cloud. Unfortunately, this fact is obscured by the encrustations of footnotes in modern texts, which imply to the poor cowed student that if only he knew what the savants do, all would be as clear as day. Every time I open Hamlet, I am stunned by its hostile virtuosity, its elusiveness and impenetrability. Shakespeare uses language to darken. He suspends the traditional compass points of rhetoric, still quite firm in Marlowe, normally regarded as Shakespeare’s main influence. Shakespeare’s words have “aura.””

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

This he got from Spenser, not Marlowe.
Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 195

Phil Brooks photo

“Are you proud o' yourself, Jeff? I could have been seriously injured last week. And you got a lot of nerve faking an eye injury and leaving me to fend for myself, especially considering you're the one who injured my eye in the first place. As far as what you said earlier about me making the whole thing up, coming out here with your cute eye patch mocking me: I wanna show you something, Jeff." (takes out a little plastic jar of some sort of liquid eye medicine)
"This, is polymoxin bisulfate. I have to apply this to my eye three times a day. The only way you obtain this is with a prescription, from a doctor. Now, I know, you know a thing or two about prescription medication, but I don't think you realize is that you have to go to a doctor to legally obtain some. Unlike you, Jeff, this is the only foreign substance I will allow in my body. So if you wanna imitate me, why don't you try living a clean lifestyle? Why don't you try living, a straightedge lifestyle? "Jeff… you've got two strikes. You know how many I have? Zero. Jeff, you know how many times I've been suspended? Zero. You know how many times I've been to a rehab facility? That's right- zero. And do you know what your chances are of beating me at Night of Champions?”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

(long pause)
"Zero."
Addressing Jeff Hardy before his match with the Great Khali, both to prove that his eye injury is real (in storyline) and to drive home a point about the drug-related mistakes of Jeff's past as recently as 16 months ago. July 10, 2009.
Friday Night SmackDown

Stephen Colbert photo

“I believe democracy is our greatest export. At least until China figures out a way to stamp it out of plastic for three cents a unit.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (2006)