Symbolic Quotes

Symbolic violence is violence wielded with tacit complicity between its victims and its agents, insofar as both remain unconscious of submitting to or wielding it.

For women, 50 has too long been seen as a symbolic cut-off point. A roadblock where your energy, vitality and career prospects were once expected to come to a screeching halt.

Establishing the two Eids as official holidays will carry important practical and symbolic significance.

When it comes to meritocracy and diversity, the symbolic is real. And that means that simple actions that reduce bias, such as blind resume or application screening, are a double win: they reduce implicit bias and they help communicate our commitment to meritocracy.

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.

The symbolic language of the crucifixion is the death of the old paradigm; resurrection is a leap into a whole new way of thinking.

People’s most prized possessions carry deeply symbolic and emotional significance.

I’ve been standing up against what I call the ‘virtue signalling’ from Justin Trudeau which actually ignores the real challenges of the day and offers symbolic gestures as a substitute.

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

Most of the time, criticism that takes pop culture seriously involves performing some kind of symbolic analysis, decoding the work to demonstrate the way it represents some other aspect of society.

The words that we use I think are symbolic of the values that we hold.

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.

The most mysterious feminine factor, the existence that we men, we don’t know. It’s woman. It’s feminine. That’s what the sword is about. That’s the symbolic meaning of the sword.

Fairytales work on two levels. On a conscious level, they are stories of true love and triumph and overcoming difficult odds and so are pleasurable to read. But they work on a deeper and symbolic level in that they play out our universal psychological dramas and hidden desires and fears.

Once my paintings are complete, the model no longer lives in the painting as themselves. I see something bigger, more symbolic – an archetype.

Elvis is symbolic of a lot of things, dreams coming true being one of them.

Accident is as much a part of fiction as anything else, symbolic of the grace that, along with will, conspires to put words on the page.

Everybody in Hollywood loves symbolic gestures.

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

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

If you look closely you can see that they are all interconnected, symbolic of a never-ending circle in which it is simply impossible for the dog to catch the rabbit.

I have a fresh start, now that I’ve turned 18, which feels like such a symbolic age of independence and hopefully a new phase of my life.

The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

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.

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.

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

So much of the literature we had to read for high school English class was filled with victimized, tragic, symbolic women who spurred the plot forward with their inevitable shunning/death/shunning-followed-by-pregnancy-followed-by-death timelines.

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

On a scale personal enough to be felt by all, but big enough to be symbolic, the two irreconcilable faiths of our time – Communism and Freedom – came to grips in the persons of two conscious and resolute men.

The symbolic value of having an African-American president has certainly eased some racial tensions in America, but they’re not gone.

Ever since I was 18 or 19, I’ve wanted to question the sound, tones, and scale associated with the piano as an instrument symbolic of modern European music.

Scientific reality is the modern human condition, and you can see that in the symbolic nature of my work.

Mothers have always held such symbolic weight in determining a person‘s worth. Your mother tongue, your motherland, your mother’s values – these things can qualify or disqualify you from attaining myriad American dreams: love, fluency, citizenship, legitimacy, acceptance, success, freedom.

If every woman who’s had an abortion took tomorrow off in protest, America would grind to a halt. And that would be symbolic: because women grind to a halt if they are not in control of their fertility.

Castro always used the boxers as a symbolic war against American values to demonstrate that they fight for something more than money.

I was getting a little bored with my hair. It’s kind of a symbolic thing, just getting rid of the past, moving forward. It’s amazing what a reaction you get when you cut your hair.

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

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.

Doug Stanhope is great – I saw his ‘Burning the Bridge to Nowhere‘ show and it was inspiring. He’s like an anti-shaman, taking the sting out of a bunch of things we’ve chosen to give a symbolic power to. I’ve made it sound noble and worthy there, it’s not, it’s really funny.

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.

Religions have always adopted rich symbolic languages to signify the different aspects of their respective forms of faith and mythology.

We have a First Amendment right to burn the flag as symbolic speech. The Constitution protects that right. To spend time and effort on this is ridiculous.

As a proud Indigenous man I have a lot of things that are symbolic and have a lot of meaning to me.

I prefer tailored clothes. I always have. But I find that whatever I wear, people see it as charged with symbolic meaning.

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

One of the interesting applications of symbolic systems is artificial intelligence, and I spent some time thinking about how to create a brain that operates the way ours does.

Soon after the inauguration, the Obamas gave Big Food a case of heartburn when, in the spring of 2009, Michelle Obama planted an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn, a symbolic but nevertheless powerful act that thrilled the food movement.

The search for the symbolic value of phonemes, each taken as a whole, runs the risk of giving rise to ambiguous and trivial interpretations because phonemes are complex entities, bundles of different distinctive features.

In Italy, they say rain on your wedding day is symbolic of fresh beginnings, cleansing, a pure marriage, and also a wet knot that can’t be untied.

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.

Man’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.

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.

For me, a memoir is supposed to be understood as a representation of your life, whereas a novel is self-consciously symbolic.

I remember when I got into Juilliard – which was just crazy to me, that I would be studying at a school like that – the choice to cut all my hair off was really symbolic for me.

To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies.

The cost to Tata of purchasing Land Rover and Jaguar may have been small, but its wider symbolic significance is enormous.

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.

Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.

Tattoos are like stories – they’re symbolic of the important moments in your life. Sitting down, talking about where you got each tattoo and what it symbolizes, is really beautiful.

I’m not a religious person. The language of photography is symbolic.

A door handle is very symbolic to me. It is the first object that one will interact with before entering a new space.

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.

We try to put on a show that people can be proud of whether you are in Tuscaloosa, Baton Rouge, Austin, Tallahassee or Columbus, Ohio or wherever you are. We try to be symbolic of where you happen to be that Saturday. You tune into it, you see the energy, passion and love we have for the sport.

You have a diasporic black world, and the only way to put it back together again is symbolic. It’s like Humpty Dumpty. Whoever could edit the ‘Encyclopedia Africana’ would provide symbolic order to the fragments created over the past 500 years. That is a major contribution.

Live Below the Line raises real money to help the world’s poorest people, but it is also a symbolic demonstration aimed at highlighting – not replicating – the plight of the world’s poor.

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.

Reconciliation requires changes of heart and spirit, as well as social and economic change. It requires symbolic as well as practical action.

Indian names were either characteristic nicknames given in a playful spirit, deed names, birth names, or such as have a religious and symbolic meaning.

Having the vote is just symbolic. There are still many issues on which women don’t have any right and, in many countries, where women are given very very few rights.

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.

It was a symbolic moment when ‘Moonlight‘ literally took the Oscar out of ‘La La Land’s’ hand.

People crown kings and queens at homecoming parades all the time. We do a lot of things in our society that are simply symbolic.

Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders.

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.

Cynicism is something which has become symbolic of imperial policy.

In Britain, the theatre has traditionally been where the public goes to think about its past and debate its future. The formation of the National Theatre, at the Old Vic, near the South Bank, in 1963, institutionalized the symbolic importance of drama by giving it both a building and state funding.

The fact that the same symbolic programming primitives work for those as work for math kinds of things, I think, really validates the idea of symbolic programming being something pretty general.

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.

Barack Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans. But there is nothing ‘mere‘ about symbols.

A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people’s hope.

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!

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.

I think of a monument as being symbolic and for the people and therefore rhetorical, not honest, not personal.

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.

Steve Jobs now rests with the sublime satisfaction of symbolic immortality.

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.

In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.

Without the ability to criticize unjust laws in powerful symbolic ways, we can’t change them. And the point of a democracy is that people should be able to convince other people to change a law.

One cannot understate the importance of eliminating Bin Laden. He was a symbolic head of the organisation and, as we now know, an operational head of the organisation.

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.

I consider personally the election of Barack Hussein Obama to have very great symbolic meaning. A Muslim and a Christian name – so in his name there is a synthesis, although people from time to time want to overlook that, and they do it intentionally.

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 like birthday cake. It’s so symbolic. It’s a tempting symbol to load with something more complicated than just ‘Happy birthday!’ because it’s this emblem of childhood and a happy day.

I think ‘Rheingold’ has symbolic meaning of what happens in the world when you’re running after the Rhine gold, after the gold. It doesn’t end very well. It’s kind of a reminder of the values of life, and I think ‘The Ring,’ in a way, is kind of a prediction of Wagner of what would happen in the world.

Every holiday has unique fare and symbolic foods, but none as much as Rosh Hashana.

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

Not to get too deep on shaving my mustache, but it was kind of symbolic of, ‘This is a moment of liberation, a chance to reinvent yourself.’ That’s kind of what I did.

I think the Bravo test is really important for a number of reasons. It’s kind of symbolic. It raises a lot of the issues that are related to the whole controversy over nuclear testing.

The reason why I wear gold – I wear gold for three reasons. One, when Jesus was born, three wise men came from the east: one brought frankincense, one brought myrrh, the other one brought gold. The second reason I wear gold is I can afford it. The third reason I wear it, it’s symbolic of my African heritage.

In just the same way the thousands of successive positions of a runner are contracted into one sole symbolic attitude, which our eye perceives, which art reproduces, and which becomes for everyone the image of a man who runs.

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.

I think where traditional values are concerned, Chinese people see nature as very symbolic. It’s a form of culture.

The symbolic view of things is a consequence of long absorption in images. Is sign language the real language of Paradise?

The most important precedents deal with the whole idea of symbolic programming – the notion of setting up symbolic expressions that can represent anything one wants, and then having functions that operate on both their structure and content.

To speak, therefore, of an electric current in the nerves, is to use quite as symbolic an expression as if we compared the action of the nervous principle with light or magnetism.