The chief end of a man is to frame general ideas — and... no general idea is worth a damn.
--
Letter to Morris R. Cohen (12 April 1915), as quoted in Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations? (2008) edited by Ned Sherrin, p. 169.Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Wherever ideas come together they tend to weld into general ideas; and whenever they are generally connected, general ideas govern the connection; and these general ideas are living feelings spread out.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme.
Charles Hartshorne
Third, these general ideas are not mere words, nor do they consist in this, that certain concrete facts will every time happen under certain descriptions of conditions; but they are just as much, or rather far more, living realities than the feelings themselves out of which they are concreted. And to say that mental phenomenon are governed by law does not mean merely that they are describable by a general formula; but that there is a living idea, a conscious continuum of feeling which pervades them, and to which they are docile.
Charles Sanders Peirce
As you can see this is a composition of vertical and horizontal lines which will (in an abstract manner) have to express the idea of rising upwards, of magnitude. This is the same idea which used, for example, to be the guiding principle in the construction of cathedrals. Since only the manner of expression and not the representation has to express this general idea, I have not given any title. An abstract human mind will, of itself, receive the intended impression. I always confine myself to expressing the general.
Piet Mondrian
Turkish Army chief of General Staff General Huseyin Kivrikoglu's statement that Armenia has weapons of mass destruction is an absurd attempt to compromise Armenia in the eyes of the international community.
Seyran Shahsuvaryan
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
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