Top 110 Symbolic Quotes

Today’s terrorists are pursuing a distinct route. They are increasingly attacking civilians in symbolic targets, such as those of economic importance, or venues of bustling life like public transportation or entertainment, like nightclubs.

The symbolic significance of individual athletes’ achievements has sometimes proved more productive than the negotiations of diplomats or politicians.

Eating matzo ball soup for the first time was akin to a religious experience because of how deeply contemplative it was. It made me realise that something as simple as chicken soup – in any culture or religion, or through any perspective – can be very symbolic, nourishing and meaningful.

What was new was the symbolic force of the targets struck. The attackers did not just physically cause the highest buildings in Manhattan to collapse; they also destroyed an icon in the household imagery of the American nation.

The thing about Wagner is we’re always wrong about him, because he always embraces opposites. There are things in his operas which viewed one way are naturalistic, and viewed another way are symbolic, but the problem is you can’t represent both views on stage at once.

It’s always great to have things from France at a wedding. It’s symbolic of style, of culture, of taste.

I get myself a gig somewhere, whether it’s in a club, whether it’s in a bar, it doesn’t matter, and I just work on New Year’s Eve because I always feel it’s very symbolic for me for the next year, for the new year.

The Catalonian movement is quite serious; I don’t think it’s simply symbolic. I think that they believe that Catalonia can be more successful on its own than as part of Spain.

The entrance into Jerusalem has all the elements of the theatre of the absurd: the poor king; truth comes riding on a donkey; symbolic actions – even parading without a permit!

The strong bond of sisterhood was a famous trait in classical art and literature about Amazons. But it was modern people who interpreted that as a sexual preference for women. That started in the 20th century. The Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva declared that Amazons were symbolic of lesbianism in antiquity.

I know that I’ll joke around to the last minute I get in the car. But once the helmet’s on – it’s sort of a cliche, but it’s true – it’s quite symbolic that that is ‘go time,’ and I’m ready to have some fun and be bad while I do it.

Building a bridge, in my opinion, is a symbolic gesture, linked with the needs of people who cross over it, and with the idea of overcoming or surmounting obstacles. A modern bridge can also be a work of art. It helps to shape our daily lives and becomes a vital experience for all the people who use it.

‘A Christmas Carol’ is an extravagantly symbolic thing – as rich in symbols as Christmas pudding is rich in raisins.

We have new ways to be born, humane and symbolic ways to die, different ways to be rich… new ways to be human and to discover what we are to each other.

There’s something in human nature that says we need to have at least one symbolic place where chaos and dark desires can live.

A bride is a bride the first time around. The white dress and the white veil are symbolic. So many people are breaking the rules that people don’t know what the rules are.

The Christian Bible is a symbolic book, not a literal one. The one Christians know as Jesus was actually a symbol for the sun. Ancient sun worshippers believed the sun died at the end of the winter solstice and then three days later it would be reborn at the start of its cycle – December 25.

Aside from that reservation, a fictive tale even has the advantage of manifesting symbolic necessity more purely to the extent that we may believe its conception arbitrary.

One can hardly be Indian and not know that almost every accent, which hand you eat your food with, has some deeper symbolic truth, reality.

Capitalism is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics.

Marriage is absolutely something that’s important to me. It’s the ultimate symbolic step in love.

Incumbents are safe, but party majorities are not. This fosters symbolic votes, message politics and little serious legislating in Congress.

To try to convey literally what the Garden of Eden was like is meaningless. What matters is its symbolic function.

I feel the symbolic world is the nub of a problem for an artist.

I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of humankind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context.

I think a cyber-terrorism attack is overblown, though the threat exists. I think al Qaeda and other groups are more interested in symbolic terrorism, like what they did to the World Trade Center – suicide bombers or something that really has an effect and is meaningful to people.

The idea of windows, that’s so symbolic to me within labor. And I’m always opening windows during a birth. If someone’s been in labor all night and they’re exhausted and sort of over it, opening a window or drawing a curtain can change the game. And sometimes the doula is the first one to suggest it.

Clothes allow you to see yourself in a different light. They can transform you instantly and have a very real, visceral impact. Clothes become symbolic of who we are.

In ancient African cultures, a young man was not considered a full member of the tribe, an elder, a man. He couldn’t marry and he couldn’t own land until he had killed a lion. It was symbolic.

When I grew up, you needed to have straight hair. It’s symbolic of needing to be like everyone else, needing to look like everyone else. And what that meant was looking like the dominant ruling class in America.

I’m not playing myself. It’s a symbolic situation, where I want to introduce a fascist behind the table. I couldn’t have had anybody else do that; for it to be successful, I had to do it myself.

Information comes through to me in 3 basic ways seen, hearing, and feeling the energy of the person that’s crossed over. In which it is a symbolic type of language.

As is known, it is in the realm of experience inaugurated by psychoanalysis that we may grasp along what imaginary lines the human organism, in the most intimate recesses of its being, manifests its capture in a symbolic dimension.

Often in gothic novels there’s a large house, an estate, and it’s symbolic of that culture. Usually it’s sort of moldering or rotted or something, and sometimes it’s a whole community.

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.

Men do not have to cook their food; they do so for symbolic reasons to show they are men and not beasts.

If I had to find one characteristic that is most symbolic of me, I think I am tenacious.

History shows that all protest movements rely on symbols – boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, flags, songs. Symbolic action on whatever scale – from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to wearing a simple wristband – is designed to disrupt our everyday complacency and force people to think.

Berlin has a uniquely haunting nature, symbolic of a problematic system that was created to oppress and divide a nation.

I just think that everything is symbolic, and who you are determines everything that you do, small moves and big moves.

For conservative leaders, making candidates pay them court, publicly and ostentatiously, is a colossal source of their symbolic power before their followers. It’s kabuki theater, mostly.

I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!

So we in Congress have a very clear choice. We can take largely symbolic action and sit back and fiddle while Americans burn more gasoline. Or we can pass concrete, effective legislation that will save consumers money while significantly reducing U.S. oil consumption.

Left ear, I wear four earrings. The four is symbolic of the four seasons, spring, winter, summer and fall, the four directions, north, east, south and west, the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

I readily admit it is easy to make of horses what we will. Silent, in some ways reserved, they allow us to train them, and to project our ideas upon them; to ride and drive them, and to make them symbolic, perhaps to a greater degree than any other species.

I am successful if I manage to make a film that I want and if it works emotionally for the audience and if it stays with them after the screening and means something for them. Awards or money have symbolic power.

Ali vs. Stevenson would have served as a symbolic battle between the United States and Cuba, capitalism and communism: Castro’s values instilled in his boxers pitted against the values of ‘merchandise’ boxers from the rest of the world.

We lived in one of those half-basement apartments, and on our first night of being in America, someone reached through the grate that protects the window and stole our laundry detergent – which wasn’t a big deal, but it felt symbolic when I heard about it later as an adult.