71 Symbols Quotes

I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.

The black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers - weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there's money inside. There's where the power lies.

Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors.

Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry.

The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.

It's the old case against symbols: if you get them, they seem obvious and artificial, and if you don't, you miss the whole point.

Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.

Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols.... we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the symbols, rule us.

In the rough, a symbol is a sign that stands for something... Before a noise, etc., may become a symbol, something must exist for the symbol to symbolize.

The blessed damozel lean'd out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters still'd at even; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven.

Each state of the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it is shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it; eternity is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth dwells in the sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny of the human race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily creation.

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a man nailed to two pieces of wood.

Drawn crudely in the dust of three window-panes were a swastika, a hammer and sickle, and the Stars and Stripes. I had drawn the three symbols weeks before, at the conclusion of an argument about patriotism with Kraft. I had given a hearty cheer for each symbol, demonstrating to Kraft the meaning of patriotism to, respectively, a Nazi, a Communist, and an American. 'Hooray, hooray, hooray,' I'd said.

We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science. And yet, if one were to give oneself the trouble, one could easily find, in certain parts at least of contemporary mathematics... symbols as clear, as beautiful, and as full of spiritual meaning as that of the circle and mediation. From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it.

With spots quadrangular of diamond form, Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife, And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.

I was on par with the Creator of the Universe there in the dark in the cocktail lounge. I shrunk the Universe to a ball exactly one light-year in diameter. I had it explode. I had it disperse itself again. Ask me a question, any question. How old is the Universe? It is one half-second old, but the half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far. Who created it? Nobody created it. It has always been here. What is time? It is a serpent which eats its tail, like this: This is the snake which uncoiled itself long enough to offer Eve the apple, which looked like this: What was the apple which Eve and Adam ate? It was the Creator of the Universe. And so on. Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.

The relation between psyche and soma, mind and brain, are peculiarly intimate; but, as in marriage, the partners are not inseparable: indeed their divorce was one of the conditions for the mind's independent history and its cumulative achievements. But the human mind possesses a special advantage over the brain: for once it has created impressive symbols and has stored significant memories, it can transfer its characteristic activities to materials like to stone and paper that outlast the original brain's brief life-span. When the organism dies, the brain dies, too, with all its lifetime accumulations. But the mind reproduces itself by transmitting its symbols to other intermediaries, human and mechanical, than the particular brain that first assembled them.

Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.

The imagination...that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the sense and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors.

'To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. To cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt.'

The flag of racialism which has been hoisted in Wolverhampton is beginning to look like the one that fluttered 25 years ago over Dachau and Belsen.

The very first thing the President did was to show me the new Presidential Seal, which he had just redesigned. He explained, 'The seal has to go everywhere the President goes. It must be displayed upon the lectern when he speaks. The eagle used to face the arrows but I have re-designed it so that it now faces the olive branches: what do you think?' I said, 'Mr. President, with the greatest respect, I would prefer the American eagle's neck to be on a swivel so that it could face the olive branches or the arrows, as the occasion might demand.'

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.

Reign of blows cascading down upon your shoulders Far too many men dressed up as soldiers The lamb is brought to the ground Under the weight of the Crown A crown of thorns and dark deeds The swastika and the hammer and symbol Are sickles that reap only weeds

Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazened with the 'F-word' are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling.

We must not forget that the lizard and the snake are identified with the unconscious and with the forces of evil. There's something deep in human memory that responds strongly to snakes. Even if you've never seen one. I think that a snake just embodies everything that we fear.

The fine purple The purest gold The red of the Sacred Heart The grey of a ghost The 'L' of the lips are open To the 'O' of the Host The 'V' of the velvet The 'E' of my eye The eye in wonder The eye that sees The 'I' that loves you.

All the banners stop waving And the flags stop flying And the silence comes over Thousands of soldiers...

Master, Master Poet, Master of words sung and spoken, They have builded temples to house your name, And upon every height they have raised your cross, A sign and a symbol to guide their wayward feet, But not unto your joy. Your joy is a hill beyond their vision, And it does not comfort them. They would honour the man unknown to them. And what consolation is there in a man like themselves, a man whose kindliness is like their own kindliness, A god whose love is like their own love, And whose mercy is in their own mercy? They honour not the man, the living man, The first man who opened His eyes and gazed at the sun With eyelids unquivering. Nay, they do not know Him, and they would not be like Him.

I hadn't aimed at anything. If I had thought of the bullet's hitting anything, I don't remember now. I was the great marksman, anyway. If I aimed at nothing, then nothing is what I would hit. The bullet was a symbol, and nobody was ever hurt by a symbol. It was a farewell to my childhood and a confirmation of my manhood. Why didn't I use a blank cartridge? What kind of a symbol would that have been?

The bleeding-heart symbol does not represent any known revolutionary organization. ... Yes, the bleeding heart was something else again. A gruesome symbol on a vivarium floor. Fingers that broke without their owner noticing. An ink drawing appearing from nowhere on a dossier cover, like a signature. A signature.

A symbol is an important thing. That is why we chose an Aztec eagle. It gives pride... When people see it they know it means dignity.

France was built with swords. The fleur-de-lis, symbol of national unity, is only the image of a spear with three pikes.

It was used mainly as a regimental mess and dining hall and so was hung with flags, banners, the hides of enemies, bits and pieces of old weapons and military paraphenalia.

Please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).

'Roc-A-Fella chain, yeah that's my rapper style/Rosary piece, yeah that's my Catholic style/Red and white One's, yeah that's my Kappa style/And I ain't even pledge/Crack my head on the steering wheel and I ain't even dead/If I could go through all that and still be breathing/Bitch bend over, I'm here for a reason'

If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.

I have withdrawn the red dress, the mala, because thousands of people wanted to be sannyasins but just because of the clothes and the mala they felt difficulties in the world - their job, their family, their wife, their parents, their friends - and it was too much of a trouble. I have withdrawn everything. Now whatsoever remains is something inner which neither the wife can detect nor the father nor the job nor the friends.

This hypnagogic condition. Attention-faculty diminished so that twilight state obtains; world seen merely in symbolic, archetypal aspect, totally confused with unconcious material.

Dreams and Symbols (1986)