Iconoclasm Quotes

• Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Truth, Honesty, Way

  Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). “Professor At The Breakfast Table”, p.117, Reprint Services Corporation

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• There is iconoclasm in the excessively intellectual, and they delight in destroying their dearest moral or sentimental idols, the better to prove their strength.

  Paul Bourget

  Idols, Intellectual, Delight

  Paul Bourget (1908). “Cosmopolis: Crowned by the French Academy”

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• It's a mark of any icon that it should be open to iconoclasm.

  Charles Jencks

  Icons, Should, Mark

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• To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese.

  Tom Robbins

  Laughter, Rain, Ignorance

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• The appeal of science fiction has always been its iconoclasm . . . But in order to be an iconoclast, an author must be more than merely aware of the idol he wishes to destroy. He must be intimate with it and understand it in all its aspects. This means that he must have devoted serious thought to it, and have beliefs of his own which will stand up in the place of the broken idol. In other words, any child can complain, but it takes an adult to clash with accepted beliefs . . . an adult with ideas.

  Alfred Bester

  Children, Mean, Order

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• To its devotees the bowtie suggests iconoclasm of an Old World sort, a fusty adherence to a contrarian point of view. The bowtie hints at intellectualism, real or feigned, and sometimes suggests technical acumen, perhaps because it is so hard to tie. BowTies are worn by magicians, country doctors, lawyers and professors and by people hoping to look like the above. But perhaps most of all, wearing a bow tie is a way of broadcasting an aggressive lack of concern for what other people think.

  Warren St. John

  Country, Real, Thinking

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• It would scarcely be destruction," he replied gently. "Let us call it iconoclasm, the swallowing of formulas, which has always had its full retinue of idealists. And you do not want a Napoleon . All that is needed is direction, which could be given by men of far lower gifts than a Bonaparte. In a word, you want a Power-House, and then the age of miracles will begin.

  John Buchan

  Men, House, Miracle

  John Buchan (2016). “The Complete Works of John Buchan (Unabridged): Thriller Classics, Spy Novels, Supernatural Tales, Short Stories, Poetry, Historical Works, The Great War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs – All in One Volume”, p.1674, e-artnow

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• Take what the old-church
  found in Mithra's tomb,
  candle and script and bell,
  take what the new-church spat upon
  and broke and shattered.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Poetry, Church, Bells

  Hilda Doolittle (1998). “Trilogy”, New Directions Publishing

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• Rebelliousness really is the province of young people-that kind of iconoclasm.

  Steve Martin

  People, Kind, Young

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• Zen is...joyous iconoclasm which respects nothing and no one, particularly itself.

  Dave Brandon

  Joyous

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• This book could scare them. The sex, the violence, the dream sequences and the iconoclasm - I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with that. I understand that. It was very uncomfortable to write some of it

  Craig Ferguson

  Funny, Dream, Sex

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