Quotessence
Home / Topics / Artifacts Quotes

Artifacts Quotes

Browse 127 quotes about Artifacts.

Related topics

HumansMadeWorldArtIfsMenMindPeopleThinkingCultureFirstsLittlesKindMaterialsObjectsWay

Artifacts Quotes

“If imaginary beings die an imaginary death they will be dead nonetheless. You think that you can create a history of what has been. Present artifacts. A clutch of letters. A sachet in a dressingtable drawer. But that's not what's at the heart of the tale. The problem is that what drives the tale will not survive the tale. As the room dims and the sound of voices fades you understand that the world and all in it will soon cease to be. You believe that it will begin again. You point to other lives. But their world was never yours.”

WorldBelieveHeartDeathHistoryImaginarySurviveArtifacts
Book:The Passenger
Create image

“Imagine if we natives went to the cemeteries in your cities and dug up your beloved relatives, pulled off rings, watches, and clothes, and called them "artifacts," then carried the bones over to the university for study so we could understand you. Consider that there are more bones of native people in universities and museums for study, than there are those of us living.”

MuseumsArtifactsNative AmericansIndigenous PeoplesUniversitiesExhumation
Book:Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems
Create image

“The bus here because they lost Rosa Parks's bus." "Who lost Rosa Parks's bus?" "White people. Who the fuck else? Supposedly, every February when schoolkids visit the Rosa Parks Museum, or wherever the fuck the bus is at, the bus they tell the kids is the birthplace of the civil rights movement is a phony. Just some old Birmingham city bus they found in some junkyard. That's what my sister says, anyway." "I don't know." Cuz took two deep swallows of gin. "What you mean, 'You don't know'? You think that after Rosa Parks bitch-slapped white America, some white rednecks going to go out of their way to save the original bus? That'd be like the Celtics hanging Magic Johnson's jersey in the rafters of the Boston Garden. No fucking way.”

Civil RightsMuseumsAfrican AmericansRace RelationsWhitesArtifactsRosa ParksThe Henry Ford
Book:The Sellout
Create image

“Because of the tendency of engineers to focus more on engineering matters rather than on archaeology, history, or anthropology, they are often accused of stripping artifacts of their cultural context and cherrypicking the evidence. Yet as an engineer, I strongly argue that the engineering context is, in fact, a cultural context in and of itself--one that is less susceptible to ambiguity than the cultural context of mummies and potsherds, which can be added decades or even centuries after a building has been completed.”

CultureHistoryEvidenceEngineeringEngineersAmbiguityArchaeologyArtifactsMummies
Book:Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs
Create image

“At locations scattered all across North America from Alaska to New Mexico and from Florida to the state of Washington, more than 1,500 Clovis sites have been found. These sites have yielded more than 10,000 Clovis points and tens of thousands of other artifacts from the Clovis toolkit (40,000 at Topper alone [...]). yet among all these archaeological riches, it bears repeating that the sum total of Clovis human remains found in 85 years of excavations is limited to the Anzick-1 partial skeleton.”

RemainsArchaeologyArtifactsDeep Human HistoryClovisExcavations
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“Similarly, others think that the mined copper has gone “missing,” and that this perceived absence of artifacts in North America was further evidence for trans-Atlantic trade. I learned that this misunderstanding arose because most people are totally unaware that thousands of copper artifacts made by Native Americans have been found around Lake Superior and are still regularly discovered to this day. The reality is that these so-called missing copper artifacts were simply lost over vast stretches of forests, lakes, rivers, and prairies. One can only guess how many missing artifacts are actually out there. If the size and extent of the prehistoric copper mines around Lake Superior are any indication, thousands of artifacts are still likely to be found.”

ArchaeologyArtifactsCopperNative American History
Book:Great Water: The Lost Mines of Lake Superior
Create image

“What we have been taught is that the ancient Egyptians were in posession of only simple hand tools, and that the only metals available to the Egyptians of the fourth dynasty, when the Giza Pyramids were built, were copper, gold, and silver. What is inferred, therefore, is that absent the tools made from these materials, the simple abrasive experiments actually demonstrate the stone-working methods of ancient Egypt. We are told that the ancient Egyptians had not yet developed the knowledge to extract the raw materials necessary to produce iron and steel. It has been suggested that they may have used meteoric iron, because they found it lying on the ground, but they did not mine the ore and smelt it in a foundry. Support for this view is the lack of evidence that they used tools made of any material other than copper, stone, and wood. Yet absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Although sophisticated tools made of iron or steel may not yet have been discovered in the archaeological record, what has been found is not adequate enough to explain how the artifacts were created.”

KnowledgeToolsMetalsEngineeringArchaeologyArtifactsMasonry
Book:Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs
Create image

“Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words. It's so much easier to be a critic than a celebrator. Always remember there is a human being on the other end of every exchange and behind every cultural artifact being critiqued. To understand and be understood, those are among life's greatest gifts, and every interaction is an opportunity to exchange them.”

GivingHumansEndsMotivationalRememberOpportunityHuman BeingsBehindsEasierUnderstoodResourcesCriticsCreditGenerousInteractionGreatest GiftsArtifactsGiving Credit
Author:Maria Popova
Create image

“Photography is much more about elimination than inclusion. The images we make with a lens typically eliminate ninety percent of our field of view and everything that is out of our field of view. The shutter slices time, eliminating all moments before and after it opens and closes. Three dimensions are reduced to two. And in some cases color is removed. How can we call these kinds of artifacts unaltered?”

KindTwoMomentsThreeViewsCasesFieldsColorPhotographyPercentDimensionsInclusionLensesNinetyEliminationEliminatingArtifactsShuttersBefore And AfterThree Dimensions
Author:John Paul Caponigro
Create image

“The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable.”

NeedsMindHumansLooksKindLittlesBookLightEyeLastsTechnologyCenturyMachinesComplexesDecadesHandleCuriousPleasantDevicesHuman MindEfficientNeatEphemeralCompactArtifactsOne Of A KindHuman EyesShowy
Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
Create image

“Naked I came into the world, but brush strokes cover me, language raises me, music rhythms me. Art is my rod and staff, my resting place and shield, and not mine only, for art leaves nobody out. Even those from whom art has been stolen away by tyranny, by poverty, begin to make it again. If the arts did not exist, at every moment, someone would begin to create them, in song, out of dust and mud, and although the artifacts might be destroyed, the energy that creates them is not destroyed.”

IfsWorldHas BeensArtMomentsMightSongEnergyLanguagePovertyMinesArt IsRaisesTyrannyNakedDestroyedRhythmDustStaffStrokesBrushesMudStolenShieldsArtifactsBrush Strokes
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image

“Information wants to be free.' So goes the saying. Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, seems to have said it first.I say that information doesn't deserve to be free.Cybernetic totalists love to think of the stuff as if it were alive and had its own ideas and ambitions. But what if information is inanimate? What if it's even less than inanimate, a mere artifact of human thought? What if only humans are real, and information is not?...Information is alienated experience.”

IfsThinkingWantFirstsHumansSaidIdeasRealWholeSeemsEarthStuffAliveInformationAmbitionDeserveMereBrandsWhat IfFoundersArtifactsHuman Thought
Book:You Are Not a Gadget
Create image

“I have shown that those who deplore Artificial Intelligence are also those who deplore the evolutionary accounts of human mentality: if human minds are non-miraculous products of evolution, then they are, in the requisite sense, artifacts, and all their powers must have an ultimately mechanical explanation. We are descended from macros and made of macros, and nothing we can do is beyond the power of huge assemblies of macros.”

IfsMindHumansMadeCan DoProductsHugeEvolutionAccountsExplanationHuman MindArtificial IntelligenceMentalityArtificialMiraculousAssemblyArtifactsMacro
Author:Daniel Dennett
Create image

“I personally have never trusted museums. ... It is because museums, broadly speaking, live off of the art and artifacts of others, often art and artifacts that have been obtained by dubious means. But they also manipulate whatever it is they present to the public; hence, until Judy Chicago, in the 1970s ... few women artists were hung in any major museum. Indian artists? Artifacts only, please. Black artists? Something musical, maybe? And so forth.”

MeanHas BeensArtArtistBlackPleaseMajorsMusicalIndianMuseumsChicagoTrustedHungManipulateNever TrustDubiousArtifactsWoman Artist
Author:Alice Walker
Create image

“The digital age is for me in many ways about temporal wounding. It's really messed up our ontological clocks. In the digital economy, everything is archived, catalogued, readily available, and yet nothing really endures. The links are digital encryptions that can and won't be located. That will have to be reassembled over time. It won't be exactly what it was. There will be some slightly altered version. So the book is both an immaterial and material artifact.”

WayBookAgeEconomyMaterialsEndureAvailableVersionsClockDigitalLinksAlteredMessed UpDigital AgeArtifactsEncryption
Author:Masha Tupitsyn
Create image

“The widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only those technologies that prove functional for a culture and can be integrated into everyday life are 'left over.' However, the perception of what is functional, successful and useful is itself the product of social and cultural--and last but not least--political and economic processes. Selection processes and abandoned products and product forms are usually not discussed.”

FactsLastsFormPoliticalCultureLeftSocialProcessTechnologySuccessfulEconomicProductsProvePerceptionEverydayAbandonedEntityTechnologicalEveryday LifeSelectionInabilityIntegratedRetrospectArtifacts
Author:Johannes Grenzfurthner
Create image

“Seurat and Signac mixed paintings with the dry and abstract laws of science. This approach, in my opinion, usually strays from the purpose of art in general. Because it means that one cannot expect from an artifact, that is created with mathematical laws, to establish an improbable and irrational relationship between the work and the viewer.”

MeanArtLawPurposeOpinionPaintingApproachMathematicalAbstractDryIrrationalViewersImprobableArtifactsPurpose Of Art
Author:Guity Novin
Create image

“Yet the most pervasive error one encounters in contemporary arguments about belief in God-especially, but not exclusively, on the atheist side-is the habit of conceiving of God simply as some very large object or agency within the universe, or perhaps alongside the universe, a being among other beings, who differs from all other beings in magnitude, power, and duration, but not ontologically, and who is related to the world more or less as a craftsman is related to an artifact.”

WorldUniverseBeliefSidesObjectsHabitArgumentErrorsAtheistContemporaryRelatedAgencyEncountersMagnitudeDurationBelief In GodCraftsmanArtifactsConceiving
Author:David Bentley Hart
Create image

“Money, after all, is an abstract artifact, like language - merely symbolized by the paper or coin or whatever. If you can fully grasp its abstractedness, especially in the computer age, it becomes quite clear that no group can monopolize this abstraction, except through a series of swindle. If the usurers had been bolder, they might have monopolized language as well as currency, and people would be saying we can't write more books because we don't have enough words, the way they now say we can't build starships, because we don't have enough money.”

PeopleIfsWayWritingWellsBookEnoughMightWould BeAgeLanguageClearGroupsPaperComputerSeriesAbstractCurrencyCoinsAbstractionArtifacts
Author:Robert Anton Wilson
Create image

“Evolving Culture, Reality, as we perceive it, is largely shaped by the artifacts, both material and symbolic, of thought, thought that leads to creative manifestation in form and color. With that in mind, it might be suggested that the visual artist, - from commercial designer to fine art painter - has much to do with most things that enter your everyday visuals, and thus form a major portion of one's reality and, certainly, how this culture manifests and evolves.”

MindArtRealityMightFormArtistCultureCreativeColorMaterialsFineMajorsEverydayPainterEvolvePerceiveManifestationDesignerVisualsPortionsSymbolicFine ArtsVisual ArtArtifactsVisual Artist
Author:Robert Venosa
Create image

“Racial discrimination in elections in Texas is no mere historical artifact. To the contrary, Texas has been found in violation of the Voting Rights Act in every redistricting cycle from and after 1970.”

Has BeensRealityFoundPoliticsJusticeHistoryDemocracyRightsGenerationsPolicyEqualEthicsConstitutionElectionHistoricalMereHuman RightsContraryDiscriminationIdeologyVotingCyclesTexasEqual RightsViolationDisobedienceCivil DisobedienceRight To VotePartisanshipRacial DiscriminationArtifactsVoting Rights ActRedistricting
Author:Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Create image

“Human artifacts not only include material structures and objects, such as buildings, machines, and automobiles, but they also include organizations, organizational structures like extended families . . . tribes, nations, corporations, churches, political parties, governments, and so on. Some of these may grow unconsciously, but they all originate and are sustained by the images in the human mind.”

MindHumansMayGovernmentPoliticalNationsGrowsChurchPartyObjectsBuildingMaterialsMachinesOrganizationStructureCorporationsHuman MindTribesPolitical PartiesAutomobileOrganizationalArtifactsExtended FamilyOrganizational Structure
Author:Kenneth E. Boulding
Create image

“Disney is a huge presence when it comes to fairy tales because he’s made of them such brilliant artifacts in terms of movie-making. But it’s very hard to ignore what he’s done to them. I'm not interested in denigrating Disney or even commenting on him very much. I'm more interested in seeing what I can do with the stories myself.”

MadeI CanHardDoneStoriesTermCan DoSeeingHugeBrilliantTalesFairyFairy TaleNot InterestedArtifactsMovie Making
Author:Philip Pullman
Create image

“For me the journey of making a film is a journey of discovery as to what that film is. I mean what I do is what other artists do, painters, novelists, people that make music, poets, sculptors, you name it. It's about starting out and working with the material and discovering through making, working with the material the artifact.”

PeopleMeanFilmArtistNamesJourneyPoetMaterialsDiscoveryStartingPainterNovelistsDiscoveringSculptorsStarting OutArtifacts
Author:Mike Leigh
Create image