An American of the present day reading his Sunday newspaper in a state of lazy collapse is one of the most perfect symbols of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen.
My joke is that my father was a minister and my mother was an English teacher, so I’m trained to see the world in terms of symbols, which is hard when you just want to make toast.
But even in the Christian religion, much of its real meaning is hidden by words that are misleading and symbols that but few understand.
My music is simple stuff. Anybody can sit down, look at a set of symbols and produce sounds the music represents.
Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.
I don’t have an extensive background in theory, but the amount of it that I’ve learned, I’ve applied, so I have a vocabulary of melodic and rhythmic relationships. And that’s all theory is – it’s symbols to help you identify those relationships.
Christmas is a story that has both religious and pagan origins, and to ignore its power is to ignore the power of myth – those symbols and legends that help us to ground our lives.
A common allegiance to form of expression that is identified with no single national unit is likely to prove one of the most potent symbols of the freedom of the human spirit that the world has yet known.
I think math is a hugely creative field, because there are some very well-defined operations that you have to work within. You are, in a sense, straightjacketed by the rules of the mathematics. But within that constrained environment, it’s up to you what you do with the symbols.
What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It’s their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.
Among the other values children should be taught are respect for others, beginning with the child’s own parents and family; respect for the symbols of faith and the patriotic beliefs of others; respect for law and order; respect for the property of others; respect for authority.
This year, as we celebrate the 230th anniversary of America’s independence, please remember the symbols that are sacred to this country. Fly Old Glory high and show your respect and admiration for this great nation and the values we hold dear.
I love Obama. And Michelle. I was so grateful for them. They were such stunning people. We were lucky to have them. They were great symbols for our society.
Fiction isn’t made by scraping the bones of topicality for the last shreds and sinews, to be processed into mechanically recovered prose. Like journalism, it deals in ideas as well as facts, but also in metaphors, symbols and myths.
I am much more aware of making the plot more original, avoiding contrivance, having the story matter much more. I used to think more about symbols consciously. Now I think much more about the story.
Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.
After a life deprived of everything from romantic love to the choice of when to wake up in the morning, after 29 years without the ability to have a career or even to be alone at toilet, the Bijani sisters are not symbols but women who have had to live a shared life of constant, quotidian sacrifice.
Every democracy is constructed day-to-day. And the electoral process reduces and minimalizes every single aspect of human complexity. We’re putting it into pamphlets. We’re doing a publicity show. We’re becoming symbols.
One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself.
I’m a person of faith, and the language that I use to define my faith, the symbols and metaphors that I rely upon to express my faith, are those provided by Islam because they make the most sense to me.
The Catholic religion doesn’t have conspicuous symbols.
Migratory birds connect people, ecosystems, and nations. They are symbols of peace and of an interconnected planet.
For the jihadists, Muslim women who embrace Western mores, and wear tight jeans or mini skirts, are hated symbols of corruption that need to be eradicated. For the ideological mentors of Breivik, a similar disturbance comes from the burqa, which is banned in France and Belgium, partly thanks to their efforts.
Real shapes and real patterns are things you would observe in nature, like the marks on the back of a cobra’s hood or the markings on a fish or a lizard. Imaginary shapes are just that, symbols that come to a person in dreams or reveries and are charged with meaning.
Human nature doesn’t change. When enough people are comfortable enough financially, there is going to be human nature that wants to spend more money on better quality and, to some degree, status symbols as well.
You can go from object to object, from plant to plant, from animal to animal and regard them as symbols for the spiritual. In this way, you make your imaginative capacities fluid and release them from the sharp contours of sense perception.
The Japanese covet important symbols – their heroic past as enshrined in Yasukuni, the Imperial family which has never been sullied by scandal.
I grew up in the north of Chile, and this is why there are a lot of religious symbols in my pictures: because the Catholic Church in Latin America is very strong.
But I enjoy the opportunity to use swear symbols.
From America’s schools, religion has been relentlessly purged. No prayers, no Bibles, no Christian symbols, no Ten Commandments.
Since the Industrial Revolution, we tend to use technology to show our power: you know, we build high-rises, towers, big buildings that become symbols of power and capitalism. We don’t talk about how emotions and nature can be connected.
Pictures have a lot more power than text. Text is just a bunch of little symbols. You have to actually read it and imagine it, and even that can be censored. With pictures, it’s a lot more immediate.
As it seeks to rule the seas once again, China desires tangible symbols of its past as a naval power. Finding a sunken Chinese ship or coins in Kenyan waters would be powerful in this regard.
I think the aloe is one of South Africa’s most powerful, beautiful and celebratory symbols. It survives out there in the wild when everything else is dried.
The best leaders… almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.
When terrorists attacked the symbols of our national unity and strength, they failed to realize that they were just symbols of our strength. The real strength of our nation comes from our people – not our buildings.
In an age robbed of religious symbols, going to the shops replaces going to the church. We have a free choice, but at a price. We can win experience, but never achieve innocence. Marx knew that the epic activities of the modern world involve not lance and sword but dry goods.
Throughout human history, people have developed strong loyalties to traditions, rituals, and symbols. In the most effective organizations, they are not only respected but celebrated. It is no coincidence that the most highly admired corporations are also among the most profitable.
In many traditions, hawks are sacred: Apollo’s messengers for the Greeks, sun symbols for the ancient Egyptians and, in the case of the Lakota Sioux, embodiments of clear vision, speed and single-minded dedication.
There’s a reason why the cultures of so many Chinatowns around the world in some ways are more Chinese. They’ve held onto older Chinese rituals, traditions, and symbols in ways that, if you go back to China today, they’re not holding on to. They’re getting married in white dresses and in churches.
Looking back, I can see that the women I loved, at least early on, were status symbols. I suppose, in that sense, I was my mother’s true disciple. She’d taught me that a good man, though elusive, could transform one’s whole life once he was caught.
In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better.
When you can type a few words into a search engine and land on your topic – or when you can scan a Shakespeare play for specific words or symbols – what opportunities might you miss to expand your thinking in unexpected ways?
All women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols.
Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank.
I understand the power of symbols, and if I had anything on my house that seriously offended someone, I’d take it down if for no other reason than common courtesy.
My brother often complains to me about the ‘angry Asian male’ in the United States. As a female, I haven’t encountered this, but Asian-American men are angry. They’re angry because, for so many years, they’ve been neglected as sex symbols. Asian women have it much easier, I think; we’re accepted into various circles.
From the U.S. Capitol Building to the White House, our national symbols that represent freedom to so many of us, were built by people who were anything but free.
