Symbolic Quotes - Page 3

• I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense... symbolic of themselves. I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller - to find out how they are.

  Richard Avedon

  Photography, Doctors, People

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• As is known, it is in the realm of experience inaugurated by psychoanalysis that we may grasp along what imaginary lines the human organism, in the most intimate recesses of its being, manifests its capture in a symbolic dimension.

  Jacques Lacan

  Lines, May, Dimensions

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• The Christian Bible is a symbolic book, not a literal one. The one Christians know as Jesus was actually a symbol for the sun. Ancient sun worshippers believed the sun died at the end of the winter solstice and then three days later it would be reborn at the start of its cycle - December 25.

  David Icke

  Christian, Jesus, Book

  Interview, metro.co.uk. July 16, 2002.

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• A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people's hope.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Thinking, People, Opponents

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• You have a diasporic black world, and the only way to put it back together again is symbolic. It's like Humpty Dumpty. Whoever could edit the 'Encyclopedia Africana' would provide symbolic order to the fragments created over the past 500 years. That is a major contribution.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Past, Order, Years

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• In any architecture, there is an equity between the pragmatic function and the symbolic function.

  Michael Graves

  Architecture, Function, Equity

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• Cats and their owners are on a private, exclusive loop of affection. Thus cats have become symbolic of a community eschewed and a hyper-engagement with oneself. They represent the profound danger of growing so independent in New York that it's not merely that you don't need anyone - it's that you don't know how to need anyone.

  Sloane Crosley

  New York, Cat, Independent

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• We are not entirely sure of the meaning of all of the symbolic stones and their placement. Neither Joseph Smith nor Brigham Young said too much about these. Brigham Young said, “Figures (symbols) are reduced to reality, and realities are exhibited by figures, and those who have the Spirit and understand, derive great comfort and consolation from that source.

  Loren C. Dunn

  Reality, Comfort, Stones

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• I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!

  Tracy Chapman

  Song, Weather, Together

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• What was new was the symbolic force of the targets struck. The attackers did not just physically cause the highest buildings in Manhattan to collapse; they also destroyed an icon in the household imagery of the American nation.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Icons, Target, Manhattan

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• It's always great to have things from France at a wedding. It's symbolic of style, of culture, of taste.

  Andre Leon Talley

  Style, Culture, Taste

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• Iconic clothing has been secularized. . . . A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.

  Angela Carter

  Hope, Eye, Men

  Angela Carter (1998). “Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings”, Penguin Group USA

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• I feel the symbolic world is the nub of a problem for an artist

  Anish Kapoor

  Artist, World, Problem

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• I'm not a religious person. The language of photography is symbolic.

  Sebastiao Salgado

  Photography, Religious, Photographer

  "In the beginning". Interview with Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. September 11, 2004.

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• Look who's calling the cauldron black." "Kettle. It’s a kettle. Get your metaphors right." "That wasn’t a metaphor. It was a, you know..." He stared off into space, blinking. "One of those things that’s symbolic of another thing. But isn’t the same thing. Just like it." "You mean a metaphor?" "No! It’s like a story...like...a proverb! That’s it." "I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a proverb. Maybe it was an analogy." "I don’t think so.

  Richelle Mead

  Mean, Thinking, Space

  Richelle Mead (2011). “Succubus On Top”, p.102, Kensington Publishing Corp.

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• The violence of the Left is symbolic, the injuries are not intended. The violence of the Right is real - directed at people, designed to cause injuries. Vietnam, nuclear weapons, police out of control are intentional forms of violence. The violence from the Right is aimed directly at people and the violence from the Left is aimed at institutions and symbols.

  George Carlin

  Real, People, Police

  George Carlin (2009). “Last Words”, p.122, Simon and Schuster

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• Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven says. Even on a symbolic lovel, that's creation in frenzy.

  Yann Martel

  World, Looks, Christianity

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• On the rare occasions when our dreams succeed and achieve perfection - most dreams are bungled - the are symbolic chains of scene and images in place of a narrative poetic language; they circumscribe our experiences or expectations or situations with such poetic boldness and decisiveness that in the morning we are always amazed when we remember our dreams.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Dream, Morning, Expectations

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• A labyrinth is a symbolic journey . . . but it is a map we can really walk on, blurring the difference between map and world.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Journey, Differences, Labyrinth

  Rebecca Solnit (2001). “Wanderlust: A History of Walking”, p.56, Penguin

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• One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Punishment, Enemy

  Aldous Huxley (1933). “Retrospect: an omnibus of Aldous Huxley's books”

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• The objects I chose were designed to hold something, but I didn't fill them up. They remained empty. They were little symbolic shrines to thirst.

  Margaret Atwood

  Shrines, Littles, Empty

  Margaret Atwood (2008). “Moral Disorder and Other Stories”, p.82, Anchor

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• The participation if women in some armies in the world is in reality only symbolic. The talk about the role of Zionist women in fighting with the combat units of the enemy in the war of 5 June 1967 was intended more as propaganda than anything real or substantial. It was calculated to intensify and compound the adverse psychological effects of the war by exploiting the backward outlook of large sections of Arab society and their role in the community. The intention was to achieve adverse psychological effects by saying to Arabs that they were defeated, in 1967, by women.

  Saddam Hussein

  Military, Real, War

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• Love and death are very similar. They're the times in your life when you most want to believe in magic, when you yearn for some symbolic act or retrospective edit that can change the world you find yourself in.

  Michael Marshall Smith

  Believe, Magic, Finding Yourself

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• We have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to withhold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level.

  Sigmund Freud

  Children, Intellectual, Levels

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• The symbolic value of having an African-American president has certainly eased some racial tensions in America, but they're not gone.

  Naomi Wolf

  America, President, Gone

  "Naomi Wolf on Obama: 'His record on civil liberties is shocking'". Interview with Killian Fox, www.theguardian.com. October 13, 2012.

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