Far too often CEOs hire executives based on an abstract notion of what they think the executive should look and feel like.

FORBES: Preparing To Fire an Executive

In China the abstract notion of an external investor, or a market, does not command anywhere near the same respect as do the state and the demands of the managers within the company itself.

ECONOMIST: Chinese business

Take Letterman: by invoking Kirstie Alley, the formerly svelte star of Fat Actress, he gives the somewhat abstract notion of port security a recognizable shape and offers the audience a laughable absurdity in place of a maddening one.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Strange Bedfellows'

The State Department's Legal Adviser Harold Koh believes the US should subordinate its laws to an abstract and largely unfounded notion of international law.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Rocking Obama's world