Symbolic Quotes - Page 7

• This morning President Obama met with Britain's Prince William in the Oval Office. It was a meeting between a symbolic ruler with no real power and the future king of England.

  Conan O'Brien

  Morning, Kings, Real

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• The fifth and by far the most important reason is that stoning is literally a means of crushing the murderer's head by means of a rock, which is symbolic of God. This is analogous to the crushing of the head of the serpent in Genesis 3:15. This symbolism testifies to the final victory of God over all the hosts of Satan. Stoning is therefore integral to the commandment against murder.

  Gary North

  Crush, Mean, Rocks

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• The purpose of a fishing trip is not to catch fish. Bringing home meat is important, but it is more symbolic than necessary, as the new morality of catch-and-release has shown. What is important is what happens between people on fishing trips, especially between uncles and nephews, fathers and sons, old men in general and young boys in particular, it is one of the few times men are together without women.

  Paul G. Quinnett

  Uncles, Father, Home

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• One of the many sad results of the Industrial Revolution was that we came to depend more than ever on the intellect, and to ignore the intuition with its symbolic thinking.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Thinking, Intuition, Revolution

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.76, Convergent Books

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• People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Media, People, Captives

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

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• It is quite likely ... that the central figure of the gospels is not based on any historical individual. Put simply, not only is the theological "Christ of faith" a synthetic construct of theologians, a symbolic "Uncle Sam" figure, but if you could travel ... back to First-Century Nazareth, you would not find a Jesus living there.

  Robert M. Price

  Jesus, Uncles, Historical

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• I am hopeful that Antarctica in its symbolic robe of white will shine forth as a continent of peace as nations working together there in the cause of science set an example of international cooperation.

  Richard E. Byrd

  White, Hopeful, Shining

  Statement made during International Geophysical Year (IGY) operations in 1957, inscribed on the Byrd Memorial at McMurdo Station, Antartica, 1957.

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• Isn't it wonderful that two of the most sacred and symbolic plants, the olive and the vine, live on almost nothing, a terrace of limestone, sun and rain.

  Janet Erskine Stuart

  Rain, Two, Vines

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• Where hunger is imposed by external circumstances, the act of starvation remains literal, a tragic biological event that does not serve metaphoric or symbolic purposes. It is only in a country where one is able to choose hunger that elective starvation may come to express cultural conflict or even social protest.

  Kim Chernin

  Country, May, Able

  Kim Chernin (1982). “The obsession: reflections on the tyranny of slenderness”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• In early childhood, children develop a set of symbols that 'stand for' things they see in the world around them... Children are happy with symbolic drawing until about the age of eight or nine... when children develop a passion for realism. Our schools do not provide drawing instruction. Children try on their own to discover the secrets of realistic drawing, but nearly always fail and, sadly, give up on trying.

  Betty Edwards

  Children, Giving Up, Passion

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• Ancient traditions have long associated holy wells and springs as very special places of the Goddess or anima mundi: symbolic of the Great Mother and associated with birth, the feminine principle, the universal womb, the prima materia, the waters of fertility and refreshment and the fountain of life. The dreaming sites, as they are called, have also been associated with visions, healing, and other paranormal experiences. In ancient Greece, for example, there were more than three-hundred medical centers placed at water sources, where patients experienced healing.

  Christopher McDowell

  Life, Mother, Dream

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• To the media, I have become a symbolic figure, critical of China. According to the government, I am a dangerous threat.

  Ai Weiwei

  Media, Government, Figures

  "Ai Weiwei: China excluded its people from the Olympics. London is different". www.theguardian.com. July 25, 2012.

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• What distinguished man from animals was the human capacity for symbolic thought, the capacity which was inseparable from the development of language in which words were not mere signals, but signifiers of something other than themselves. Yet the first symbols were animals. What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.

  John Berger

  Animal, Men, Firsts

  John Berger (2015). “About Looking”, p.8, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Artists, whatever their medium, make selections from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist.... In relation to the inclusiveness and literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted. That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence.

  Jane Jacobs

  Life, Art, Order

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• We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.

  Ernst Cassirer

  Religious, Thinking, Expression

  Ernst Cassirer, Maureen Lukay (2006). “An essay on man: an introduction to a philosophy of human culture”, Meiner Verlag

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• Having become conscious of the truth he once perceived, man now sees only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now understands the symbolic element in Ophelia's fate, he now recognizes the wisdom of the woodland god, Silenus: it nauseates him.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Fate, Men, Nausea

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• Mass, time , magnetic moment, the unconscious: we have grown up with these symbolic concepts, so that we are startled to be told that man had once to create them for himself. He had indeed, and he has: for mass is not an intuition in the muscle, and time is not bought ready-made at the watchmaker's.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Men, Intuition, Made

  Jacob Bronowski (1965). “Science and Human Values”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• I hate symbolic art in which the presentation loses all spontaneous movement in order to become a machine, an allegory -- a vain and misconceived effort because the very fact of giving an allegorical sense to a presentation clearly shows that we have to do with a fable which by itself has no truth either fantastic or direct; it was made for the demonstration of some moral truth.

  Luigi Pirandello

  Art, Hate, Order

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• The maxims of Christian life, which should draw upon the truths of the Gospel, are always partially symbolic of the mind and temperament of those who teach them to us. The former, by their natural sweetness, show us the quality of God's mercy; the latter, by their harshness, show us God's justice.

  Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

  Life, Christian, Justice

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• Mars is the symbolic and totally stimulating next objective that could so dominate the next century's exploration efforts. From Mars, the resources of all the asteroids will become readily available.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Effort, Mars, Asteroids

  Interview with Scholastic students, teacher.scholastic.com. November 17, 1998.

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• It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Business, Home, Imagination

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• Our President has given symbolic support to the National Day of Prayer but I believe that our nation needs an impassioned call to our collective knees.

  Jonathan Falwell

  Prayer, Believe, Support

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• Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic - purely symbolic - move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Real, Moving, Gun

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• Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate oneself from the ugly realities of the world, to keep oneself pure and so without responsibility for the cruelty and carnage all around. Becoming a vegetarian is a highly practical and effective step one can take toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering on them.

  Peter Singer

  Philosophical, Responsibility, Animal

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

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• By now you must have accepted the fact that your religion , in fact, none of the Earthly religions, truly knew what the afterlife would be. All made guesses, and then established these as articles of faith . Though, in a sense, some were near the mark, if you accept their revelations as symbolic .

  Philip Jose Farmer

  Afterlife, Facts, Would Be

  Philip Jose Farmer (2010). “The Magic Labyrinth”, p.148, Macmillan

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