Home / Topics / Materials Quotes

Materials Quotes

Browse 4243 quotes about Materials.

Materials Quotes

“The thing that I've always been slightly frustrated with, was that the idea of a CD is kind of confined to a material possession that you can put on a shelf. And the idea of music, for me, is always about both the communication and the sharing of content. And so the interactive part is missing.”

Kind Ideas Missing Materials Communication Possession Frustrated Shelves Confined Cds Interactive Material Possessions

Author:Yo-Yo Ma

“The ideas keep going, you have the material, you cut because there's a limit to the space allowed to you. And the space is limited because of some other constraints that have to do with money or printing or whatever.”

Ideas Space Cutting Materials Limits Keep Going Constraints Printing

Author:Ted Nelson

“A nervous excitability, a chronic exaltation of the passion, in which commingle the inferior life of the individual and its exterior manifestations, a state in which sentiment, idea, and will are confounded together, where for the lack of the powerful corrective of logic, the flights of imagination know no bounds, where life and human activity are deprived of a regulator, and move outside of material and concrete factors, by the sole interior force of the soul.”

“Entrepreneurial creation is the generation, de novo, of novelty and surprise- freedom of choice originating in the world of ideas, and imagination beyond all concern with chemicals. The contrary view- that all ideas are determined by material relationships- is the materialist superstition.”

World Ideas Choices Imagination Views Generations Creation Materials Concern Economics Surprise Determined Contrary Chemicals Superstitions Novelty Entrepreneurial Freedom Of Choice

Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World

Source: Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World

“I try very hard to handle things equally: ideas, materials, and images.”

Trying Ideas Hard Materials Handle Hard To Handle

Author:Dan Colen

“Thoughts and ideas are not phantoms. They are real things. Although intangible and immaterial, they are factors in bringing about changes in the realm of tangible and material things.”

Ideas Real Materials Factors Realms Real Things Tangible Phantoms Intangible Material Things Thoughts And Ideas

Book:An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution: The Economist

Source: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution: The Economist

“The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods. and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.”

Ifs May Important Ideas Different Purpose Universe Sides Materials Method Profound Foolish Despise Contradictory

Author:Neil Postman

“Many of the products which create a modern standard of living are only the physical incorporations of ideas- not only the ideas of an Edison or a Ford but the ideas of innumerable anonymous people who figure out the design of supermarkets, the location of gasoline stations, and the million mundane things on which our material well-being depends. Societies which have more people carrying out physical acts and fewer people supplying ideas do not have higher standards of living. Quite the contrary.”

“Ideas, as the raw material from which knowledge is produced, exist in superabundance, but that makes the production of knowledge more difficult rather than easier. Many ideas- probably most- will have to be discarded somewhere in the process of producing authenticated knowledge. Authentication is as important as the raw information itself, and the manner and speed of the authentication process can be crucial.”

Important Ideas Process Difficult Information Materials Easier Productions Speed Crucial Raw Materials Discarded

Book:Knowledge And Decisions

Source: Knowledge And Decisions

“Since art is the expression of beauty and beauty can be understood only in the form of the material elements of the true idea it contains, art has become almost uniquely feminine. Beauty is woman, and also art is woman.”

Art Ideas Form Beauty Expression Materials Elements Understood Art Is Feminine Feminine Beauty Women Beauty

Author:Remy de Gourmont

“Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material... so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.”

Thinking May Art Ideas Form Belief Attitude Materials Impact Endure Arise

Book:Ben Shahn: Paintings and Graphics : [exhibition] Santa Barbara Museum of Art, July 30, 1967-September 10, 1967; La Jolla Museum of Art, October 5, 1967-November 12, 1967 ; Art Association of Indianapolis, Herron Museum of Art, December 3, 1967-January 3, 1968

Source: Ben Shahn: Paintings and Graphics : [exhibition] Santa Barbara Museum of Art, July 30, 1967-September 10, 1967; La Jolla Museum of Art, October 5, 1967-November 12, 1967 ; Art Association of Indianapolis, Herron Museum of Art, December 3, 1967-January 3, 1968

“A certain amount of contempt for the material employed to express an idea is indispensable to the purest realization of this idea.”

Ideas Certain Materials Amount Realization Contempt Indispensable Employed

Book:Photographs by Man Ray: 105 Works, 1920-1934

Source: Photographs by Man Ray: 105 Works, 1920-1934

“You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences. The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his own experience to find his acting choices and feelings. The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors.”

Looks Ideas Feelings Choices Actors Acting Materials Playwright

Book:Stella Adler - The Art of Acting: preface by Marlon Brando compiled & edited by Howard Kissel

Source: Stella Adler - The Art of Acting: preface by Marlon Brando compiled & edited by Howard Kissel

“Ultimate peace begins within; when we find peace within there will be no more conflict, no more occasion for war. If this is the peace you seek, purify your body by sensible living habits, purify your mind by expelling all negative thoughts, purify your motives by casting out any ideas of greed or self-striving and by seeking to serve you fellow human beings, purify your desires by eliminating all wishes for material possessions or self-glorification and by desiring to know and do God's will for you. Inspire others to do likewise.”

“What greater weakness can there be than not to know what is the source of one's being, of one's life, of one's senses, of one's knowledge, and what is to be their end? What can be more deeply disheartening than to wonder whether one's soul is, perhaps, a material thing, like a stone or a reptile, corruptible like these base creatures? Is there not more strength and greatness of mind in admitting the idea of a being superior to all other beings, who has made them all and to whom all owe their existence; of a being supremely perfect, who is pure, who had no beginning and can have no ending, of whom our soul is the image and, so to speak, a portion, being a spiritual and immortal thing?”

“Now, to a single-minded man, who is either brave enough or reckless enough to surrender himself wholly to one idea, and look neither right nor left, but only forward, what earthly consequences may follow is not material. Persecution strengthens him; and so he is sure he is right, whether his course end in a prison or on a throne is no matter at all. But men of this calibre are uncommon in any age or in any country very uncommon in this age and this country.”

Men Looks May Ideas Ends Country Matter Enough Age Courses Left Materials Consequence Prison Brave Surrender Thrones Persecution Reckless Uncommon

Book:The Nemesis of Faith

Source: The Nemesis of Faith

“Nature, the sun itself, produces color effects... instantaneously. The impression of these evanescent visions is what we make desperate attempts to catch and fix by any means at hand. At such moments I am unconscious of materials, of style, of rules, of everything that intervenes between my perception and the object or idea perceived.”

Mean Ideas Moments Hands Vision Sun Effects Style Objects Produce Color Materials Perception Impression Desperate Unconscious

Author:Joaquin Sorolla

“Like a researcher in his laboratory, I am the first spectator of the suggestions drawn from the materials. I unleash their expressive possibilities, even if I do not have a very clear idea of what I am going to do. As I go along with my work I formulate my thought, and from this struggle between what I want and the reality of the material - from this tension - is born an equilibrium.”

Ifs Want Firsts Ideas Reality Born Struggle Clear Possibility Materials Tension Suggestions My Thoughts Spectators Laboratory Equilibrium Researchers Expressive

Author:Antoni Tapies

“The fact is I'm an opportunist. I'll take materials around me, materials on my table, and work with them as I'm searching for an idea that works.”

Ideas Facts Materials Tables Opportunist

Author:Frank Gehry

“Certain materials suggest ideas and ways of working.”

Way Ideas Certain Materials

Author:David Batchelor

“Poetry is the universal art of the spirit which has become free in itself and which is not tied down for its realization to external sensuous material; instead, it launches out exclusively in the inner space and the inner time of ideas and feelings.”

Art Ideas Feelings Spirit Space Materials Universal Realization Poetry Is Tied Sensuous

Book:Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art

Source: Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art

“The kernel, the soul let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.”

Source: Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)

“It's not true that you should first think up an idea for a better world and only then "put it into practice," but, rather, through the fact of your existence in the world, you create the idea or manifest it - create it, as it were, from the "material of the world," articulate it in the "language of the world."”

Thinking World Should Firsts Ideas Facts Language Existence Practice Materials Manifest

Author:Vaclav Havel

“The challenge in any musical is unifying all the moving parts of it, in particular a movie musical because now you're adding the camera and you're adding the idea of adaptation. So the challenge is to stay as true as you can to the material that you love and yet not be afraid to step outside of it and introduce elements into it that make it exist in a satisfying, exciting way cinematically.”

Way Ideas Moving Challenges Steps Particular Materials Elements Exciting Cameras Musical Satisfying Introducing Adaptation Unifying Moving Parts

Author:Marc E. Platt

“Before I start carving the idea must be almost complete. I say 'almost' because the really important thing seems to be the sculptor's ability to let his intuition guide him over the gap between conception and realization without compromising the integrity of the original idea; the point being that the material has vitality - it resists and makes demands.”

Important Ideas Seems Ability Materials Integrity Demand Originals Important Things Intuition Guides Compromise Realization Gaps Conception Vitality Sculptors Original Ideas Carving

Author:Barbara Hepworth

“We live in a supermarket of ideas, faiths, practices, theories, ideologies, and much else besides. Never in human history have there been so many movements and ideas struggling to attract our attention. Added to this, the Western world is swamped by material goods and the Western mind is dominated by the goal of material success. In all this confusion, Zen stands out as a voice of sanity. It represents a different way of seeing the world, one based upon the rediscovery of who we really are and have always been, through revealing to us our true nature.”

“I use a special tool. I make it myself; very sharp steel point and a handle like a pencil. For me it is a pencil. Maybe I have a special talent, a feeling you might say that lets me control it, to express my ideas as though I were sketching black on white.”

Ideas Use Feelings Might Black White Special Talent Materials Tools Let Me Handle Steel Pencils Sketching Special Talents

Author:Ugo Mochi

“The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of development- whether psychological or material- one must pass on to the actual realization.”

Kind Ideas Moments Certain Materials Development Intuition Psychological Realization Creating Beauty

Author:Michelangelo Antonioni

“Some people have a very strange idea that material success does not coincide harmoniously with self-realization, which is absurd. The aversion to material success, or the clinging to it, is an attachment.”

People Doe Ideas Self Strange Materials Self Realization Absurd Realization Attachment Clinging Aversion

Author:Frederick Lenz

“It is not a good idea, either, to attach material such as Krystal Flash or Flashabou, then trim all strands at one spot. This gives most of the reflectiveness at one location - where the strands were severed. Instead, clip off the strands at different lengths along the entire body - that way you'll see little sparkles of light throughout the pattern”

Source: Advanced Fly Fishing Techniques: Secrets of an Avid Fisherman

“Kevin, as the whole cast is, just wonderful people and great people, and people who are attracted to this kind of material and accepting the idea of going to Newfoundland and knowing the kind of lack of amenities.”

People Kind Ideas Whole Accepting Knowing Wonderful Materials Casts Great People Kevin Amenities

Author:Lasse Hallstrom

“Performance is made in the editing room, and I've come to see the truth in that - the idea that they say performances are usually made in the editing room because what you film is the raw material. I think just going through the process of saying, "Which take do we use? Why is that the take we want? I want that take can you edit again, I'm not sure that's the one, I think it's this one." And just because you go through that process, I think somehow it's made me sort of more open about the [actor's] possibilities.”

Thinking Want Made Ideas Use Film Actors Process Rooms Possibility Materials Performances Not Sure Editing Edits Raw Materials

Author:Ralph Fiennes

“The children's lessons should provide material for their mental growth, should exercise the several powers of their minds, should furnish them with fruitful ideas, and should afford them knowledge, really valuable for its own sake, accurate, and interesting, of the kind that the child may recall as a man with profit and pleasure.”

Men Should Mind Kind May Children Ideas Growth Pleasure Interesting Materials Exercise Lessons Sake Profit Valuable Accurate Recalls

Book:The Original Home School Series

Source: The Original Home School Series

“However inadequate our ideas of causal efficacy may be, we are less wide of the mark when we say that our ideas and feelings have it, than the Automatists are when they say they haven't it. As in the night all cats are gray, so in the darkness of metaphysical criticism all causes are obscure. But one has no right to pull the pall over the psychic half of the subject only . . . whilst in the same breath one dogmatizes about material causation as if Hume, Kant, and Lotze had never been born.”

Source: The Principles of Psychology

“Hair is the most delicate and lasting of our materials, and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle; so escaping from the idea of death, that, with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic nature,--may almost say, "I have a piece of thee here not unworthy of thy being now.”

Source: Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs from His Uncollected Prose Writings

“We call it EPCOT, spelled E-P-C-O-T: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Here it is in larger scale. EPCOT will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.”

“When developing an idea, I remind myself not to start with compromise. I envision the ideal manifestation of the idea, as if I had no limits in resources, materials, or permission.”

Ifs Ideas Materials Limits Resources Ideals Compromise Developing Manifestation Permission Ideal Man

Author:Janet Echelman

“The idea that money brings power and independence is an illusion. What money usually brings is the need for more money - and there is a shabby and pathetic powerlessness that comes with that need. The inability to risk new lives, new work, new styles of thought and experience, is more often than not tied to the bourgeois fear of reducing one's material standard of living. That is, indeed, to be owned by possessions, to be governed by a sense of property rather than by a sense of self.”

“I was in my late thirties and decided my intention in life had nothing to do with the acquiring of material things, but rather it was now my intention to experience the evolution of my own soul and to grow spiritually. I wanted to come to know the highest truths of life and to express those truths in action, through myself. I wanted to become the grandest version of the greatest idea I ever held about who I am in regards to my relationship with God.”

Knows Ideas Soul Action Wanted Grows My Own Materials Evolution Late Highest Decided Regard Intention Who I Am Versions Truth Of Life Relationship With God Material Things

Author:Neale Donald Walsch

“The Germans, in the age of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the use of letters; and the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilised people from a herd of savages incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help, the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers; the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the imagination languid or irregular.”

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“Design is not the act of amazing an audience with the novelty of forms or materials; it is the originality that repeatedly extracts astounding ideas from the crevices of the very commonness of everyday life.”

Ideas Form Audience Design Materials Everyday Originality Everyday Life Novelty Crevice

Author:Kenya Hara

“A half century from now, our grandchildren are likely to look back at the era of mass employment in the market with the same sense of utter disbelief as we look upon slavery and serfdom in former times. The very idea that a human being's worth was measured almost exclusively by his or her productive output of goods and services and material wealth will seem primitive, even barbaric, and be regarded as a terrible loss of human value to our progeny living in a highly automated world where much of life is lived on the Collaborative Commons.”

Source: The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“The Internet, too, has strong attributes of a public good, and has undermined the “private good” attributes of old media. Internet service providers obviously can exclude people, but the actual content -the values, the ideas- can be shared with no loss of value for the consumer. It is also extremely inexpensive and easy to share material. Sharing is built into the culture and practices of the Web and has made it difficult for the subscription model to be effective.”

“Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous organs, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator.”

Ifs Men World Wells Ideas Moments Able Lying Principles He Man Materials Arms Weapons Mass Capable Tools Machines Creator Appropriate Organs Machinery Monstrous Sensory Corresponding Warships

Author:Novalis

“The Marxist combination of materialism and determinism is fatally anti-humanistic. It denies a consciousness, a mind, that is independent of material conditions and class relations. It denies a will and volition that are capable of shaping the course of history. It denies an individuality that is not reducible to class. It denies both the idea and the reality of freedom, a freedom that is something more than the "bourgeois" freedom to buy and sell. It denies a morality that transcends class interests. And it denies the spirituality of man.”

Source: On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society

“The Hawk and the Dove is a wonderful idea for a book, wonderfully carried out. Nicholas Thompson has used illuminating new material to present each of his protagonists in a convincing, respectful, but unsparing way. Even more valuable, he has used the interactions and tensions between Paul Nitze and George Kennan to bring much of American 20th century foreign policy to life, with human richness ever present but with the big issues clear in all their complexity.”

“We have not the slightest idea that women are made of such light material that the breath of any fool or knave may blow them on the rocks of ruin.”

May Made Ideas Light Women Rocks Materials Fool Breaths Blow Ruins Sexism Knaves

Author:Jane Swisshelm

“As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all resolute and honest dealing with what, after all, must be every healthy literature's elementary materials.”

Ifs Ideas Literature Honest Materials Healthy Democratic Strikes Distrust Prevailing Paralyzed Resolute American Literature Platitudes

Book:H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series

Source: H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series

“Sometimes I am more interested in the richness of the material with all the stuff we've done which all tell a story to me rather than any single film career I could have, because I really do find myself interested in other people's ideas. I just want to be responsible with an array of things that engage me and feel vital, opposed to the corporate media out there that is just about making the loudest noises possible.”

People Want Feels Ideas Sometimes Done Stories Film Stuff Careers Media Materials Responsible Noise Corporate Richness Being Responsible

Author:Larry Fessenden

“Comedy is a funny thing, and it's really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title. You would never go to a club just to see "Live music," you would go to a jazz club to see jazz, a blues club to see blues, etc. But when you go to see "standup comedy," if you don't know the performers material, you really don't have any idea what you're gonna get.”

Ifs Knows Art Ideas Form Comedy Materials Jazz Clubs Titles Etc Performers Funny Things Generic Live Music

Author:Joe Rogan