Symbols Quotes

• Symbols are powerful because they are the visible signs of invisible realities.

  Saint Augustine

  Powerful, Reality, Invisible

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• I think the benefit of a Catholic childhood is your belief in visual symbols as transmitters of information and clues about life, whether it's the mystery of life or life in general.

  Robert Gober

  Thinking, Childhood, Catholic

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• Meditate upon my counsels; love them; follow them; To the divine virtues will they know how to lead thee. I swear it by the One who in our hearts engraved The sacred Tetrad , symbol immense and pure, Source of Nature and model of the Gods.

  Pythagoras

  Heart, Sacred, Virtue

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• Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science . And yet, if one were to give oneself the trouble, one could easily find, in certain parts at least of contemporary mathematics... symbols as clear, as beautiful, and as full of spiritual meaning as that of the circle and mediation. From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it.

  Simone Weil

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Circles

  Simone Weil (2002). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.286, Psychology Press

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• I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Class, Hatred, Society

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• I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in itself is a concept of time. The oak is especially so because it is a slowly growing tree with a kind of really solid heartwood. It has always been a form of sculpture, a symbol for this planet.

  Joseph Beuys

  Thinking, Tree, Sculpture

  "Art and Politics: A Small History of Art for Social Change Since 1945". Book by Claudia Mesch, 2013.

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• Remember, a word is an invention, a symbol for an idea. Written text began as an artistic representation of a thought or event.

  Edward J. Fraughton

  Ideas, Events, Artistic

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• Literature itself is a species of code. You line up symbols and create a simulacrum of life.

  Marcel Theroux

  Literature, Lines, Simulacrum

  Marcel Theroux (2013). “Strange Bodies”, p.74, Faber & Faber

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• The hijab, or sikh turban, or Jewish skullcap are all explicit symbols, but they do not represent a threat or affront to others, and have no bearing on the competence, skills and intelligence of a person.

  Randa Abdel-Fattah

  Skills, Hijab, Turbans

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• Meditation is a refocusing on symbols. It's not emptiness. We are using symbols, doorways to step from one world to another, from darkness into light, from death to immortality.

  Frederick Lenz

  Light, Meditation, Darkness

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• Man works primarily for his own self-respect and not for others or for profit. . . the person who is working for the sake of his own satisfaction, the money he gets in return serves merely as fuel, that is, as a symbol of reward and recognition, in the last analysis, of acceptance by ones fellowmen.

  Otto Rank

  Acceptance, Men, Self

  Otto Rank (2012). “Beyond Psychology”, p.264, Courier Corporation

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• In some circles Stalin has in fact been making a comeback. His portrait hangs above the dashboard of trucks, a symbol of blue- collar nostalgia for a tough leader.

  Serge Schmemann

  Blue, Circles, Leader

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• Between thought and spoken word is a gap where intention can enter, the symbol be twisted aside, and the lie come to be.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Lying, Gaps, Twisted

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Three Complete Novels of the Hainish Series in One Volume--Rocannon's World; Planet of Exile; City of Illusions”, p.283, Macmillan

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• The art of writing is not, as many seem to imagine, the art of bringing fine phrases into rhythmical order, but the art of placing before the reader intelligible symbols of the thoughts and feelings in the writer's mind.

  George Henry Lewes

  Art, Writing, Order

  George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Principles of Success in Literature”

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• Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced.

  Herbert Spencer

  Simple, May, Language

  Herbert Spencer (1868). “Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative”, p.11

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• Those in blue suits who use thinly veiled race symbols -- when they say welfare and crime and three strikes and anti- affirmative action -- they are sending messages more profound their language.

  Jesse Jackson

  Race, Blue, Profound

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• A bikeway is a symbol that shows that a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally important as a citizen on a $30,000 car.

  Enrique Penalosa

  Car, Important, Citizens

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• Space exploration is important research to our economic and national defense, and America's space program is a symbol of our success as a scientifically and technologically advanced nation.

  Randy Forbes

  America, Space, Important

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• Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.

  Arthur Eddington

  Nature, Would Be, Tools

  Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1933). “The nature of the physical world”

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• In Islamic theology, the phallic symbol is very important. Your biggest phallic symbol is New York City and your tallest building will be the phallic symbol they will hit.

  Isser Harel

  New York, Islamic, Cities

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• Luckless is the country in which the symbols of procreation are the objects of shame, while the agents of destruction are honored! And yet you call that member your pudendum, or shameful part, as if there were anything more glorious than creating life, or anything more atrocious than taking it away.

  Cyrano de Bergerac

  Country, Creating Life, Agents

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• Writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for wordlessness.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Clumsy

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• Every phenomenon of nature was a word, - the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas.

  Johann Georg Hamann

  Ideas, Community, Energy

  "Sämtliche Werken, vol. III". Book by Josef Nadler, 1949-1957.

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• The Earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the Past; the Air and Heaven, of Futurity.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Past, Air, Heaven

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1854). “The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions”, p.277

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• Did you know that I almost called the magazine Stag Party and the symbol was originally going to be a stag? I changed my mind just before we went to press, thank God. Somehow, it wouldn't have been the same. Can you imagine a chain of key clubs staffed by beautiful girls wearing antlers?

  Hugh Hefner

  Beautiful, Girl, Party

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