Symbolic Quotes

• Reconciliation requires changes of heart and spirit, as well as social and economic change. It requires symbolic as well as practical action.

  Malcolm Fraser

  Heart, Spirit, Action

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year has gone by and how little we've grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it's not to be, that for the rest of our sad, wretched pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably, irrevocably; happy birthday? No such thing.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  Birthday, Self, Years

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• If you want a symbolic gesture, don't burn the flag, wash it.

  Norman Thomas

  Flags, Gestures, Want

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• Tattoos are like stories - they're symbolic of the important moments in your life. Sitting down, talking about where you got each tattoo and what it symbolizes, is really beautiful.

  Pamela Anderson

  Tattoo, Beautiful, Talking

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• The symbolic view of things is a consequence of long absorption in images. Is sign language the real language of Paradise?

  Hugo Ball

  Real, Views, Long

  Hugo Ball (1974). “Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary”, p.104, Univ of California Press

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• Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic, and each symbol is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can enter into the inner part of the world, where you and I and day and night are all one.

  Hermann Hesse

  Night, Soul, One Day

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• Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling.

  Susanne Katherina Langer

  Art, Feelings, Creation

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• I run because it's so symbolic of life. You have to drive yourself to overcome the obstacles. You might feel that you can't. But then you find your inner strength, and realize you're capable of so much more than you thought.

  Arthur Blank

  Running, Inner Strength, Might

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• Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.

  Alex Haley

  Roots, People, My Family

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• Every gesture is a gesture from the blood, every expression a symbolic utterance... Everything is of the blood, of the senses.

  Henry Williamson

  Expression, Blood, Utterance

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• The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

  Ezra Pound

  People, Church, Literature

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• The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists of the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.

  Bertrand Russell

  Discovery, Mathematical Logic, Age

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Principles of Mathematics”, p.5, Routledge

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• Aside from that reservation, a fictive tale even has the advantage of manifesting symbolic necessity more purely to the extent that we may believe its conception arbitrary.

  Jacques Lacan

  Believe, Arbitrary, May

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• We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.

  Richard Dawkins

  Technology, Space, Brain

  Richard Dawkins (1995). “River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• In the case of drama (stage, movies, television ), there appear to be people in almost every audience who never quite fully realize that a play is a set of fictional, symbolic representations. An actor is one who symbolizes other people, real or imagined. [...] Also some years ago it was reported that when Edward G. Robinson, who used to play gangster roles with extraordinary vividness, visited Chicago, local hoodlums would telephone him at his hotel to pay their professional respects.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Real, Drama, Years

  "Language in Thought and Action". Book by S. I. Hayakawa (p.27-28), 1991.

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• Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.

  Paul Tillich

  Men, Able, Language

  Paul Tillich, F. Forrester Church (1999). “The Essential Tillich”, p.41, University of Chicago Press

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• My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.

  John Dominic Crossan

  Smart, People, Dumb

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• The whole of life is symbolic because the whole of it has meaning.

  Boris Pasternak

  Life Is, Whole

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• In the immediate as well as the symbolic sense, in the physical as well as the intellectual sense, we are at any moment those who separate the connected, or connect the separate.

  Georg Simmel

  Intellectual, Moments, Wells

  Georg Simmel, David Frisby, Mike Featherstone (1997). “Simmel on culture: selected writings”, Sage Publications Ltd

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• The theme of the diary is always the personal, but it does not mean only a personal story: it means a personal relationship to all things and people. The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic; I never generalize, intellectualise. I see, I hear, I feel. These are my primitive elements of discovery. Music, dance, poetry and painting are the channels for emotion. It is through them that experience penetrates our bloodstream.

  Anais Nin

  Mean, Discovery, People

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• Humans invent an imaginary lover and put that mask over the face of the body in their bed. That is the tragedy of language my friend. Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.

  Orson Scott Card

  Imagination, Tragedy, Bed

  Orson Scott Card (2009). “Xenocide: Volume Three of the Ender Quintet”, p.8, Macmillan

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• ...Erich Fromm wondered why most people did not become insane in the face of the existential contradiction between a symbolic self, that seems to give man infinite worth in a timeless scheme of things, and a body that is worth about 98¢.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Self, People

  "The Denial of Death". Book by Ernest Becker, 1973.

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• Numerical logistic is that which employs numbers; symbolic logistic that which uses symbols, as, say, the letters of the alphabet.

  Francois Viete

  Numbers, Use, Letters

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• Whales have become newly symbolic of real values in a world environment of which man is newly aware. Whales live in families, they play in the moonlight, they talk to one another, and they care for one another in distress. They are awesome and mysterious. In their cold, wet, and forbidding world they are complete and successful. They deserve to be saved, not as potential meatballs, but as a source of encouragement to mankind.

  Victor Blanchard Scheffer

  Encouragement, Real, Successful

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• Chess is a more highly symbolic game, but the aggressions are therefore even more frankly represented in the play. It probably began as a war game; that is, the representation of a miniature battle between the forces of two kingdoms

  Karl A. Menninger

  War, Games, Play

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