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Allegory Quotes

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Allegory Quotes

“Cable news is 24 hours long so you have to fill it up with something. No, the Muppets are not communist. And the character of Tex Richman is not an allegory for capitalism in any way. The character is called Tex Richman. It's a joke. Clearly he is a classic, old school bad guy. He's bad not because he works for an oil company but because he's evil. No, it's not a communist movie in any way.”

WayLongCharacterSchoolGuyEvilHoursCompanyNewsJokesCapitalismOilClassicCommunistBad GuysCablesOld SchoolAllegoryOil CompaniesMuppetCable News
Author:James Bobin
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“I suspect the popularity of young adults and dystopian novels has something to do with a desire for allegory and old-fashioned morality tales. In fact, you might find your religious framework here in dystopian, post-apocalyptic fiction. Here, and in videogames, you find strict codes of authority, the "rules of the game," the life-or-death quest and struggle that people crave.”

PeopleDesireReligiousNovelStruggleMoralityAuthorityYoung AdultCodePopularityDystopianAllegoryVideogame
Author:Allegra Goodman
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“Science fiction is a weird category, because it's the only area of fiction I can think of where the story is not of primary importance. Science fiction tends to be more about the science, or the invention of the fantasy world, or the political allegory. When I left science fiction, I said "They're more interested in planets, and I'm interested in people."”

PeopleThinkingWorldPoliticalFantasyImportanceScience FictionInventionAllegory
Author:Donald E. Westlake
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“If you sit in on a film class with students, their big complaint is "That's not like real life." They don't realize that they don't really want to watch real life. They don't want to sit and watch a security camera. There's a strong gravity in all of us as viewers - even in myself now and then - to want to see real life depicted. But you're looking for it in the wrong places. It's in little allegories, in something removed.”

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Author:Guy Maddin
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“There has to be the popcorn genre element, or I don't engage the same way. I like action and vehicle design and guns and computer graphics as much as I like allegory. It's a constant balancing game. I want audiences to be on this rollercoaster that fits the Hollywood mould, but I also want them to absorb my observations.”

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Author:Neill Blomkamp
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“A novel is not an allegory.... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.”

IfsWorldHeartCharacterAbleDestinyNovelInvolvedEmpathyBreathsSensualBreathingAnother WorldAllegoryInhaleTehran
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
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“Do you realize that people don't know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories - and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), etc. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWantLooksArtLife IsValuesRealizingImaginationKnow HowModernCome UpAbsurdEtcAllegoryModern ArtCarried AwayDecipherWithin Reach
Author:Milan Kundera
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“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”

ThinkingDoneEnoughGrewReaderManifestationDislikeDominationAllegory
Book:The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings
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“There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. - from the introduction of the 1986 Norton edition”

PeopleWritingHumansCharacterFactsShowsMoralNovelFailingFieldsPossibilityIncreaseTransformationChiefsIntroductionFablesAllegoryPeople Changing
Author:Anthony Burgess
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“No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were born in the wilderness. Most of the Epistles were written in a prison. The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers have all passed through fire. The greatest poets have "learned in suffering what they taught in song." In bonds Bunyan lived the allegory that he afterwards wrote, and we may thank Bedford Jail for the Pilgrim's Progress. Take comfort, afflicted Christian! When God is about to make pre-eminent use of a person, He put them in the fire.”

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Author:George MacDonald
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“The reason for you complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Here I will make an observation, and illustrate it by an allegory. Apparently, it is not good-and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind-if the if the intellect examines too closely the ideas pouring in, as it were, at the gates.”

IfsMindIdeasReasonSeemsLyingImaginationCreativeIntellectObservationGatesComplaintsConstraintsPouringHinderCreative WorkAllegory
Author:Friedrich Schiller
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“By a symbol I do not mean an allegory or a sign, but an image that describes in the best possible way the dimly discerned nature of the spirit. A symbol does not define or explain; it points beyond itself to a meaning that is darkly divined yet still beyond our grasp, and cannot be adequately expressed in the familiar words of our language.”

WayMeanDoeStillsSpiritLanguagePsychologyFamiliarSymbolsAllegory
Book:The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Structure and dynamics of the psyche
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“Masonry, according to the general acceptation of the term, is an art founded on the principles of geometry, and devoted to the service and convenience of mankind. But Freemasonry, embracing a wider range and having a nobler object in view, namely, the cultivation and improvement of the human mind, may with more propriety be called a science, inasmuch as, availing itself of the terms of the former, it inculcates the principles of the purest morality, though its lessons are for the most part veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.”

MindHumansMayArtTermViewsPrinciplesMankindObjectsMoralityLessonsImprovementSymbolsFormerRangeHuman MindDevotedConvenienceGeometryCultivationProprietyAllegoryMasonicMasonryFreemasonry
Author:William Howard Taft
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“The Society or Fraternity of Freemasons is more in the nature of a system of Philosophy or of moral and social virtues taught by symbols, allegories, and lectures based upon fundamental truths, the observance of which tends to promote stability of character, conservatism, morality and good citizenship.”

PhilosophyCharacterSocialMoralVirtueTaughtMoralityFundamentalsSymbolsStabilityCitizenshipConservatismLecturesFraternityAllegoryGood CitizenObservanceMasonicGood Citizenship
Author:William Howard Taft
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