Alfred North Whitehead
Philosopher, Mathematician
"Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life."
Symbolism quotes
Symbolism
86 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosopher
"Ask yourself whether our language is complete--whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses."
Stephen King
Author
"Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity."
Aaron Eckhart
Actor
"I think they are very important because westerns have a code and a symbolism."
Sigmund Freud
Neurologist, Psychoanalyst
"After all, we did not invent symbolism; it is a universal age-old activity of the human imagination."
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Symbolism quotes (page 1 of 5)
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"It is not strange that men of note and learning, attracted by the wealth of symbolism on Masonry, as well as by its spirit of fraternity perhaps, also by its secrecy began at an early date to ask to be accepted as members of the order; hence Accepted Masons. How far back the custom of admitting such men to the Lodge goes is not clear, but hints of it are discernable in the oldest documents of the order."
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"All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors, which is to say, as archetypes of the unconscious. No doubt this discovery is hardly credible as yet."
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"I have a horror of tags and labels. I don't understand, for instance, how people can talk about Bergman's "symbolism". Far from being symbolic, be seems to me, through and almost biological naturalism, to arrive at the spiritual truth about human life that is important to him."
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"I took back a barrel of bones to New York. They were my symbols of the desert, but nothing more. I haven't seen enough to think of any other symbolism. The skulls were there and I could say something with them."
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"There's a lot of symbolism to your return. Is that going to be enough to reinvigorate the company with a sense of magic?"
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"[Sigmund ] Freud did not under-stand that the dream is a highly creative act, written in the universal language of symbolism, and only secondarily does censorship distort those parts that the subject refuses to accept even in sleep."
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"The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive."
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"We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I learned from this exercise was not to begin a sentence with "And." When I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with "And," I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves at that time was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible."
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"Truth speaks best in the language of poetry and symbolism, I think."
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"Mahatma Gandhi was a man of peace and non-violence and lived by the Hindu principle of ahimsa, action based on refusal to do harm. As his war-strewn presidency shows, George Bush knows nothing about ahimsa and non-violence. Bush should reconsider this cynical, disrespectful display of symbolism."
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"I have always said to my pupils: "Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it when you are analyzing a dream.""
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"The symbolism - and the substantive significance - of planting a tree has universal power in every culture and every society on Earth, and it is a way for individual men, women and children to participate in creating solutions for the environmental crisis."
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"Food is life. Food is also very sensual, and in Pushing Daisies, pie being reflective of life and a man who was disconnected from the living but could bring the dead back to life being a pie maker felt like I got the symbolism of food as life."
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"In mockery I have set A powerful emblem up, And sing it rhyme upon rhyme In mockery of a time Half dead at the top."
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"It's the emotion...each word has got a connotation and symbolism and the thing is finding what's behind the word-what meaning it has and what emotion. I'm really into vocal repetition as a definite art form."
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"I don't know a whole lot about symbolism. There seems to me to be a potential danger in symbolism. I feel more comfortable with metaphors and similes."
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"The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symbolism is merely transcendental imagery."
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