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Abstract Quotes

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Abstract Quotes

“My work sometimes can be abstract and appear not to have a direct relationship to Afro-American concerns, but, in fact, it is based on that.”

Sometimes Facts Concern Direct Abstract Afros

Author:Donald Byrd

“Americans tend to endorse the use of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia when the question is abstract and hypothetical.”

Use Suicide Abstract Physicians Euthanasia Hypothetical Assisted Suicide Physician Assisted Suicide

Author:Ezekiel Emanuel

“If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. This is a very suggestive approach. It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contrevention of that order. Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.”

Ifs Two Matter Order Left Conditions Events Products Elements Approach Unique Relation Notion Definitions Abstract Isolated Dirt Systematic Inappropriate Rejecting Hygiene Classification

Author:Mary Douglas

“Your words have come true with a vengeance that I shd [should] be forestalled ... I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as Heads of my Chapters.”

Ifs Should Made Science Term Saws Written Abstract Chapters Coincidence Vengeance Publication

Author:Charles Darwin

“As far as life is concerned, there is no such thing as "Nature". There are only homes. Home is that environment to which the individual has become adapted; and almost everything is unnatural outside his range of adaptation. Harmonious equilibrium with nature is an abstract concept with a Platonic beauty but lacking the flesh and blood of life. It fails, in particular, to convey the creative emergent quality of human existence.”

Source: Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change

“Abstract systems depend on trust, yet they provide none of the moral rewards which can be obtained from personalised trust, or were often available in traditional settings from the moral frameworks within which everyday life was undertaken. Moreover, the wholesale penetration of abstract systems into daily life creates risks which the individual is not well placed to confront; high-consequence risks fall into this category. Greater interdependence, up to and including globally independent systems, means greater vulnerability when untoward events occur that affect those systems as a whole.”

Source: Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

“Abstract anger is great for rhetorical carrying on. You can go on endlessly about the post office, but it doesn't mean you're mad at your mailman.”

Inspirational Mean Inspiration Goes On Office Mad Posts Abstract Carrying On Rhetorical Post Office Mailman

Author:P. J. O'Rourke

“The wars of the future will be fought by computer technicians and by lawyers and high-altitude specialists, and that may mean war will be increasingly abstract, hard to think about and hard to control.”

Thinking May Mean War Hard Computer Lawyer Abstract Specialists Technicians

Author:Michael Ignatieff

“I like connecting the abstract to the concrete. There's a tension in that. I believe the reader or listener should be able to enter the poem as a participant. So I try to get past resolving poems.”

Should Trying Believe Able Past I Believe Reader Abstract Tension Concrete Listeners Connecting Participants

Author:Yusef Komunyakaa