Karl Kraus Quotes

The first type of abstraction from objects I shall refer to as simple abstraction, but the second type I shall call reflective abstraction, using this term in a double sense.

Every new concept first comes to the mind in a judgment.

Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.

Abstraction is everybody's zero but nobody's nought.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

The analysis of the thing is not the thing itself.

I've always been interested in visualizing something, whether it's a memory or an idea you want to be true. I am a big believer in that. I'm constantly thinking of that. If I can't picture something, then it doesn't make sense to me.

Ideas are information taking shape.

Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.

Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition.

Every action is an idea before it is an action, and perhaps a feeling before it is an idea, and every idea rests upon other ideas that have preceded it in time.

Ideas result from the collision of metaphors inside the head.

A mind that is very selective to forms... is apt to use its images metaphorically, to exploit their possible significance for the conception of remote or intangible ideas.

The more we see the more we must be able to imagine, and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see.

To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands.

It's really about living in your head... just looking out at the world, then going back into your head and tossing around a lot of ideas and coming out with something interesting to say.

I've always thought abstractly - through theme and variations rather than narrative.

Good and bad ideas both come from the same fountain of speculation and experiment.

That's the buzz for me, the creative process. An idea is never as good as when it's in your head. And then it's just how little you ruin it.

One rule of invention: before you can invent it, you have to imagine it.

My mind jumbles things, reassembles them, and plays with words without even being asked.

A thought functions only as a fragmentary part in the formulation of an idea.

What interests me about thoughts is not the moment when it crystallises into formal ideas but its earlier stages.

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.