Quotessence
Home / Topics / Symbols Quotes

Symbols Quotes

Browse 1474 quotes about Symbols.

Related topics

IfsPeopleWorldMenThinkingSexSex SymbolWayHumansKnowsArtLanguageMayMindFormRealityIdeasLooksMeanRealFactsMadeUseFirstsShouldDoeGivingBelieveFlagsHas BeensSelfWantFeelsHeartTwoWellsBookKindNeedsSpiritSaidAmericaPersonsStillsCultureStoriesDreamFiguresImportantLongValuesBodyCountryEyeLittlesMatterObjectsTogetherWritingArtistChildrenMathematicalSoulSpiritualSymbolicTryingWholeChristianReligiousStatesStatus SymbolUsedFeelingsHandsLifeMomentsSeemsBeautifulCharacterCitiesLyingMathematicsPoliticalResultsSometimesTermCrossesExpressionImaginationLightMetaphorMightModernNamesNationsSpeakVisibleArt IsCoursesDivinemore

Symbols Quotes

“...the best conclusion I was able to reach was that what we instinctively call imagination is in reality nothing less than the symbolic knowledge of that secret thread which weaves itself through our life knotted fast in all its windings, and without which we would surely be lost. But with this knowledge I realised too that this secret power also rules over us, for these same threads can be forcibly torn apart and leave us at the mercy of the dark fiend who is always ready to claim us as his own.”

DreamRealityImaginationKnowledgeThoughtsSymbolsDeceptionPerception Of Reality
Author:ETA Hoffmann
Create image

“Though we may choose to view them symbolically, dreams are actually no more or less symbolic than everyday waking reality. When the images and events don't conform to our view of reality, we call them symbols. When they do, we call them facts.”

InspirationalMindFactsRealityInspirationTruthConsciousnessMeditationDreamsAwarenessPerceptionConsciousSelf AwarenessAwakeningSymbolsSubconsciousDreams QuotesDreamingDreams InspirationalSubconscious MindConscious AwarenessObjective And SubjectiveDream Symbols
Author:Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Create image

“When I was a schoolboy in England, the old bound volumes of Kipling in the library had gilt swastikas embossed on their covers. The symbol's 'hooks' were left-handed, as opposed to the right-handed ones of the Nazi hakenkreuz, but for a boy growing up after 1945 the shock of encountering the emblem at all was a memorable one. I later learned that in the mid-1930s Kipling had caused this 'signature' to be removed from all his future editions. Having initially sympathized with some of the early European fascist movements, he wanted to express his repudiation of Hitlerism (or 'the Hun,' as he would perhaps have preferred to say), and wanted no part in tainting the ancient Indian rune by association. In its origin it is a Hindu and Jainas symbol for light, and well worth rescuing.”

SchoolEuropeEnglandSymbolsHinduismFascismWorld War Ii1930sNazisAdolf Hitler1945Rudyard KiplingSwastikasFascism In Europe
Book:Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
Create image

“It is indeed curious that engagement in paid work should represent such a powerful symbol of maturity and independence, given the realities of employment as a situation of profound dependency. I speak not only of the dependency inherent in the wage relation, but also of the dependency on commercial products and services, which become the only way to meet certain needs after work has drained our time and energy. [ch.six]”

WorkFood For ThoughtSymbolsDependenceWage Labor
Book:The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work
Create image

“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born -- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.”

MindLanguageInformationCommunicationHumanExperienceSymbolsConstraintsSemanticsSemiotics
Book:The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
Create image

“It is my conviction that, with the spread of true scientific culture, whatever may be the medium, historical, philological, philosophical, or physical, through which that culture is conveyed, and with its necessary concomitant, a constant elevation of the standard of veracity, the end of the evolution of theology will be like its beginning—it will cease to have any relation to ethics. I suppose that, so long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, and force, and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for adequate expressions of reality. So, it may be, that the majority of mankind may find the practice of morality made easier by the use of theological symbols. And unless these are converted from symbols into idols, I do not see that science has anything to say to the practice, except to give an occasional warning of its dangers. But, when such symbols are dealt with as real existences, I think the highest duty which is laid upon men of science is to show that these dogmatic idols have no greater value than the fabrications of men's hands, the stocks and the stones, which they have replaced.”

PhilosophyRealityScienceCultureForceHistoryExpressionEvolutionMoralityEthicsValueConvictionTheologyIgnorantSymbolsIdolsCarelessDogmaticPersonificationFabricationVeracityPhilology
Book:The Evolution Of Theology: An Anthropological Study
Create image

“People are going to come into your life, and God is going to use them to help you. To them you’re insignificant and don’t matter. They are not going to understand you, or even see the point of why God had you hang in there with them for so long. Remember this: Sometimes meeting someone has nothing to do with what you can provide for him or her and everything to do with what God needs you to recognize in that person. If you didn’t understand the message, God will keep sending the same person or situation into your life.”

Life LessonsPurposeFaithRelationshipsChanceAnswersMarriageFatePlansAwarenessStrengthMessagesDatingBraveryPatternsIllnessSymbolsGuidanceSignificanceHelpAssistanceLife PurposeMiraclesHoly GhostListenDirectionRevelationOpen MindednessSignsLessons LearnedRecognizeLife MissionsNo CoincidencesHang OnDivine Interventions
Author:Shannon L. Alder
Create image

“The meaning of it all is unfolding right under our noses, all the time, but we can't see it. We don't pay any attention. We were taught from childhood to avert our gaze, lest we be considered fools. So now we seem to live in some kind of collective trance, lost in a daze the likes of which have probably never before been witnessed in history. We feel the gaping emptiness and meaninglessness of our condition in the depths of our psyches. But, like a desperate man thrashing about in quicksand, our reactions only make things worse: we chase more fictitious goals and accumulate more fictitious stuff, precisely the things that distract us further from watching what is really happening. And, when we finally realize the senselessness of such reactions, we turn to 'gurus' doling out pill-form answers instead of paying attention to life, the only authentic teacher, who is constantly speaking to us. There is no literal shortcut to whatever it is that the metaphor of life is trying to convey. There is no literal truth. The meaning of it all cannot be communicated directly. There are no secret answers spelled out in words in some rare old book. The metaphor is the only way to the answers, if only we have patience and pay attention. Look around: what is life trying to say?”

LifeMindConsciousnessSymbolsMeaningIdealismHard Problem Of ConsciousnessBernardo KastrupKastrup
Book:Why Materialism Is Baloney: How True Skeptics Know There is no Death and Fathom Answers to Life, the Universe and Everything
Create image

“Their message will never be decoded, not only because there is no key to it, but also because people have no patience to listen to it in an age when the accumulation of messages old and new is such that their voices cancel one another out. Today history is no more than a thin thread of the remembered stretching over an ocean of the forgotten, but time moves on, and an epoch of millennia will come which the inextensible memory of the individual will be unable to encompass; whole centuries and millennia will therefore fall away, centuries of painting and music, centuries of discoveries, of battles, of books, and this will be dire, because man will lose the notion of his self, and his history, unfathomable, unencompassable, will shrivel into a few schematic signs destitute of all sense.”

PastHistoryNovelMessagesMythSymbolsCodeForgettingEnigmaSignsCzechDecode
Book:The Joke
Create image

“Their message will never be decoded… because people have no patience to listen to it in an age when the accumulation of messages old and new is such that their voices cancel one another out. Today history is no more than a thin thread of the remembered stretching over an ocean of the forgotten, but time moves on, and an epoch of millennia will come which the inextensible memory of the individual will be unable to encompass; whole centuries and millennia will therefore fall away, centuries of painting and music, centuries of discoveries, of battles, of books, and this will be dire, because man will lose the notion of his self, and his history, unfathomable, unencompassable, will shrivel into a few schematic signs destitute of all sense.”

PastHistoryNovelMessagesMythSymbolsCodeForgettingEnigmaSignsCzechDecode
Book:The Joke
Create image

“If metaphors require an underlying cultural framework, then the heiroglyphhic language of the gods cannot be a merely primitive stage of human consciousness: it needs the presence of both the symbolic language of heroes and the epistolary language of me as its starting point. Thus Vico is not speaking of a linear development from a metaphorical language to a more conventional language, but of a continual, cyclical activity. The language of the gods is a heap of unrelated synedoches and metonymies…”

LanguageMetaphorSymbolsHeroesGodsLinguisticsSignsSemiotics
Book:Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language
Create image

“When a judge walks into the room, and everybody stands up, you’re not standing up to that guy, you’re standing up to the robe that he’s wearing and the role that he’s going to play. What makes him worthy of that role is his integrity, as a representative of the principles of that role, and not some group of prejudices of his own. So what you’re standing up to is a mythological character. I imagine some kings and queens are the most stupid, absurd, banal people you could run into, probably interested only in horses and women, you know. But you’re not responding to them as personalities, you’re responding to them in their mythological roles. When someone becomes a judge, or President of the United States, the man is no longer that man, he’s the representative of an eternal office; he has to sacrifice his personal desires and even life possibilities to the role that he now signifies.”

RolesMythologySymbolsSymbolismOffices
Book:The Power of Myth
Create image

“The miracles of Jesus are nevertheless more than individual blessings. They are also symbols and types that reveal the full scope of Jesus' identity as the mighty Jehovah, the Creator, the one who provides for his people, and above all the Christ, who wrought the great Atonement, conquering sin and death. For people in every age Jesus can redeem from sin, change hearts and heal souls, strengthen and empower, and bring about a glorious resurrection, which are the greatest miracles of all.”

SinJesus ChristSymbolsSaviorResurrectionBlessingsMiraclesAtonementJehovahEmpowerRedeem
Author:Eric D. Huntsman
Create image

“The American eagle is not aware he is the American eagle. He is never tempted to look modest. When orators advertise the American eagle's virtues, the American eagle is not listening. This is his virtue. He is somewhere else, he is mountains away but even if he were near he would never make an audience. The American eagle never says he will serve if drafted, will dutifully serve etc. He is not at our service. If we have honored him we have honored one who unequivocally honors himself by overlooking us. He does not know the meaning of magnificent. Perhaps we do not altogether either who cannot touch him.”

AmericaPoetryUnited StatesPoemIndependenceSymbolsPatriotismEaglesAmerican Eagle
Book:Robert Francis: Collected Poems, 1936-1976
Create image

“O' melancholy,hectic chill for human soul,herewith dismal presence,any spirit does descent.”

LightPainQuotesLiteratureCreativityNovelCreativeThoughtsSymbolsThrillerStoryMelodyMelancholyInsightfulAestheticMuseInkFragranceApolloHecticMelancholiaBookloversPoesyInkedPoetrycommunityHalcyon WingsQuillArtsyNithinpurpleNithinpurplequotesThrobsAuthorencouragementNithinpurplefamousquotesPartridgebooksPoeticjustice
Book:Halcyon Wings: 'These passions feathers are gathering on a winged vision'
Create image

“Our Cross Our little circle hides in the mind, It's difficult to miss but hard to find, It goes unspoken but yet it speaks, From backward years to forward weeks, We can't forget but why even try, Two of a kind doesn't know goodbye, It's a silent question that God won't share, A breeze we feel but seems unfair, Distant, rare but only madness can see, It's something deeper than any infinity, Because we walk this parallel path up and down, There is no circle to hold us circus clowns, So let's give it a symbol and label it a loss, We will remember it always as we carry our cross.”

LovePoetryLossSymbolsPoemsDistractedLyricsCrossSong LyricsTragediesComediesSpiritual ConnectionsGreater Than InfinityOur CrossOur SymbolTo Remember
Author:Shannon L. Alder
Create image

“Art is a lie that reveals deep truths. Metaphor is one way to translate experience; symbols help us stretch our minds to finger elusive and illustrative truths. Truths are not always logical and human truth finding does not fit snugly onto the silicon chip of a computer. The rational as well as the irrational unites us as specie. We share expressible knowledge and suspect within ourselves and other people the unspeakable. The unfathomable is as much a part of our celestial humanity as is the dirt clutching our shoes, which accumulated grime grounds us to physical reality.”

TruthMetaphorSymbolsTruth QuotesTruth Of LifeSymbolicSymbolismMetaphoricalMetaphorically Speaking
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Nature was beautiful, but mute. It was not enough. She needed the world re-presented to her in verbal images, in language, and seemed to have little difficulty following the metaphors and symbols of even quite deep poems, in striking contrast to her incapacity with simple propositions and instructions. The language of feeling, of the concrete, of image and symbol, formed a world she loved and, to a remarkable extent, could enter.”

LanguageSymbolsFeeling
Book:The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
Create image

“Existuje ještě jeden další rozdíl mezi logikou zjevného a skrytého vyprávění. Ve zjevném vyprávění existuje logická kauzální souvislost mezi vnějšími událostmi. Jonáš chce plout přes moře, protože chce utéci před Bohem, usne, protože je unaven, je vržen přes palubu, protože je považován za příčinu bouře a je pozřen rybou, protože se v moři vyskytují dravé ryby. Jedna událost vyplývá z předcházející. (Poslední část příběhu je sice nerealistická, ale nikoliv nelogická.) Ve skrytém příběhu naproti tomu vládne jiný druh logiky. Různé události jsou asociací spojeny se stejným vnitřním zážitkem. To, co se jeví jako kauzální posloupnost vnějších událostí, vlastně zastupuje spojení zážitků propojených jako události vnitřní. Je to právě tak logické, jako je logický zjevný příběh, ale jede tu o jiný druh logiky.”

PsychologyDreamsSymbolsFromm
Book:Mýtus, sen a rituál
Create image

“If we look at our traditional tales, where the action before the final success always occurs three times: the last of the three times is always a little longer because it includes success: life is somehow the famous 0.142592653589793 after three....These stories are a kind of mythical Pi, that we finally 'mathematified', quantified by numbers. That's why the number Pi was and is so important. It explains the inexplicable, life, eternity, infinity, and at the same time the cycle of rebirth.”

ThreeSymbolsReincarnationRebirthPaganismPi
Author:Marie Cachet
Create image

“We were scorning the symbol of hypocrisy and hope. Many of us had only begun to realize in Africa that the Stars and Stripes was our flag and our only flag, and that knowledge was almost too painful to bear. We could physically return to Africa, find jobs, learn languages, even marry and remain on African soil all our lives, but we were born in the United States and it was the United States which had rejected, enslaved, exploited, then denied us. It was the United States which held the graves of our grandmothers and grandfathers. It was in the United States, under conditions too bizarre to detail, that those same ancestors had worked and dreams of “a better day, by and by.” . . . I shuddered to think that while we wanted that flag dragged into the mud and sullied beyond repair, we also wanted it pristine, its white stripes, summer cloud white. Watching it wave in the breeze of a distance made us nearly choke with emotion. It lifted us up with its promise and broke our hearts with its denial.”

HopeSymbolsHypocrisyAfricaAfrican AmericansBlacksAmerican FlagFlag
Book:All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
Create image

“There is, however, a strong empirical reason why we should cultivate thoughts that can never be proved. It is that they are known to be useful. Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life an d enable him to find a place for himself in the universe. He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is convinced that they make sense; he is crushed when, on top of all his misfortunes, he has to admit that he is taking part in a "tale told by an idiot.”

GodBeliefSymbolsPshycology
Author:C.G.Jung
Create image

“...this cryptic game of hide-and-seek is what makes it one of the greatest historical mysteries. So many of the symbols can be interpreted in so many different ways, there's always the possibility that all we're really looking at is a blank slate onto which anything can be read.”

MysterySymbolsInterpretationConspiracyPossibilitiesCritical ThinkingSymbolismConspiracy TheoryConspiracy TheoriesMysteriesHide And SeekCrypticConspiraciesCluesProjectingBlank SlateSymbologyReading Into ThingsReading Into EverythingSymbology TransferenceFollowing CluesInterpreting Literature
Book:History Decoded: The 10 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time
Create image

“For the philosophers of ancient Babylonia and Greece the sense world was not considered an illusion. In the search for Divine, they turned towards art, towards symbols and signs within myths and legends. They created such a marvel of art that every detail became an expression of the spiritual. In mysterious ways the wisdom of the initiates poured into poets, artists, and thinkers. They awakened powers of thought and feeling that are not directly stimulated by the spiritual world. Manipulating the elements, they turned towards the Lady Science and carried her principles to the point that we are now able to manipulate the sound, the light, the matter and its manifestation.”

SpiritualityDivineWisdom QuotesSymbolsSpiritual GrowthMind Body SpiritOccultSymbolismAncient GreeceSoul And Spirit
Book:Spiritual Symbols
Create image

“A civilization makes progress by leveraging the achievements and observations of past generations. We compress history into words, stories, and symbols that allow living people to learn and benefit from the experiences of the dead. In the space of one childhood, we can learn what it took humanity many centuries to figure out. While animals may have some capacity to instruct their young, humans are unlimited in their capacity to learn from one another. Thanks to stories, books, and our symbol systems, we can learn from people we have never met. We create symbols, or what Korzybski calls abstractions, in order to represent things to one another and our descendants more efficiently. They can be icons, brands, religious symbols, familiar tropes, or anything that compresses information bigger than itself.”

WritingHumanityReadingLanguageHistoryBooksCivilizationSymbolsMemesPresent Shock
Book:Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
Create image

“The relation of destiny with the cyclic process is implied in the figures of the legendary Tarot pack; the wealth of symbolic knowledge which is contained in each and every one of its cards is not to be despised, even if their symbolic significance is open to debate. For the illustrations of the Tarot afford clear examples of the signs, the dangers and the paths leading towards the infinite which Man may discover in the course of his existence.”

SymbolsSignsTarotTarot CardsMeaningsSymbology
Book:A Dictionary of Symbols
Create image