Totems Quotes - Page 2

Now defined as art, the totem has lost cult, taboo, and custom.

Mason Cooley

Art, Lost, Cult

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A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.

Groucho Marx

Inspirational, Funny, Cat

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Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another.

Rick Yancey

Curse, Doom, Humans

Rick Yancey (2010). “The Monstrumologist: The Terror Beneath”, p.300, Simon and Schuster

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I was never ready to give up, but I did get words of confidence to move forward from a few musicians that had climbed up the totem pole of rock. They were encouraging words that struck a nerve with me and made me stronger.

Lita Ford

Giving Up, Moving, Rocks

"The Runaways Rocker Lita Ford on "Living Like a Runaway". Interview with Jeff Doles, www.hollywoodchicago.com. March 10, 2016.

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Today when the Fundamentalists are once more insisting that the fundamentals of fundamentalism are fundamental to our being No. 1 on the Lord's totem pole, it's very brave of you to invite the "resident atheist" of mid-Missouri to share her thoughts with you.

Ruth Hurmence Green

Atheist, Brave, Atheism

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More than ever, we express ourselves with what we buy and how we use what we buy. Extensions of our personality, totems of our selves, reminders of who we are or would like to be. Great marketers don't make stuff. They make meaning.

Seth

Self, Personality, Use

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I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and a proven competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the non-plused apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand.

Joan Didion

Children, Men, Keys

FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Sep 10, 2011

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This sense of the safe-deposit box as a totem of responsible security inspired me to rent a box myself shortly after the birth of our first child….

Eric Zorn

Children, Safe, Firsts

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He [Astaire] was not a sexual animal, but he made his partners look so extraordinarily related to him.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Animal, Looks, Made

"Larry King Live", transcripts.cnn.com. May 5, 2002.

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But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of animal life.

Alfred Russel Wallace

Animal, Principles, Looks

Alfred Russel Wallace (2016). “Travels on the Amazon”, p.61, Library of Alexandria

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Up until then I'd thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan. I thought of that policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I'd lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn't understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us. Eddie Hazelwurst. What a shitbucket.

Sue Monk Kidd

White, People, House

Sue Monk Kidd (2011). “The Secret Life of Bees”, p.128, Hachette UK

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But something magical happened to me when I went to Reardan. Overnight I became a good player. I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I'd always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole - I wasn't expected to be good so I wasn't. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good. I wanted to live up to the expectations. I guess that's what it comes down to. The power of expectations. And as they expected more of me, I expected more of myself, and it just grew and grew.

Sherman Alexie

Mean, Player, Expectations

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In fact I no longer value this kind of memento. I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted. There was a period, a long period, dating from my childhood until quite recently, when I thought I did. A period during which I believed that I could keep people fully present, keep them with me, by preserving their mementos, their "things," their totems.

Joan Didion

Long, People, Broken

Joan Didion (2012). “Blue Nights (Enhanced Edition)”, p.44, Knopf

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Human beings are the only animal that thinks they change who they are simply by moving to a different place. Birds migrate, but it's not quite the same thing.

Douglas Coupland

Moving, Animal, Thinking

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A 'death mirror' held up to American culture - Brando, bikes and black leather; Christ, chains and cocaine. A 'high' view of the myth of the American motorcyclist. The machine as totem from toy to terror. Thanatos in chrome and black leather and bursting jeans.

Kenneth Anger

Mirrors, Views, Jeans

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My career has always been one of the most important things, but after having a baby you find that it drops down on the totem pole.

Marion Jones

Baby, Careers, Important

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I consider nothing low but ignorance, vice, and meanness, characteristics generally found where the animal propensities predominate over the higher sentiments.

William John Wills

Ignorance, Animal, Vices

William John Wills (1863). “A Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia: From Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria”, p.45, London : R. Bentley

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The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists.

H. Allen Smith

Passion, Animal, Lists

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The Bumpuses were so low down on the evolutionary totem pole that they weren't even included in Darwin's famous family tree. They had inbred and ingrown and finally emerged from the Kentucky hills like some remnant of Attila the Hung's barbarian horde. Flick said that they had webbed feet and only three toes. It might have been true.

Jean Shepherd

Family, Kentucky, Feet

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I think that in the end, a talk show is a very different animal.

Dan Abrams

Animal, Thinking, Different

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Yahweh is presented in the Jewish Bible as stateless and nationless. He can’t be used as a totem or fetish in that way.

Terry Eagleton

Yahweh, Way, Used

"Religion for radicals: An interview with Terry Eagleton". Interview with Nathan Schneider, blogs.ssrc.org. September 17, 2009.

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To save an animal's life in order that it may suffer indefinitely is something I would never condone.

Louis Leakey

Animal, Order, Suffering

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When men and women across the country reported how happy they felt, researchers found that jugglers were happier than others. By and large, the more roles, the greater the happiness. Parents were happier than nonparents, and workers were happier than nonworkers. Married people were much happier than unmarried people. Married people were generally at the top of the emotional totem pole.

Faye J Crosby

Happiness, Country, Work

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I didn't intend to write about totems or people searching. I tried not to constrain myself, and this is what I ended up with. There's this great Auden quote: "I look at what I write so I can see what I think."

Jonathan Safran Foer

Writing, Thinking, People

Interview with Joshua Wolf Shenk, www.motherjones.com. May 2005.

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The offshore ocean area under U.S. jurisdiction is larger than our land mass, and teems with plant and animal life, mineral resources, commerce, trade, and energy sources.

Tom Allen

Ocean, Animal, Land

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