143 Quotes About Symbols

Far more powerful than religion, far more powerful than money, or even land or violence, are symbols. Symbols are stories. Symbols are pictures, or items, or ideas that represent something else. Human beings attach such meaning and importance to symbols that they can inspire hope, stand in for gods, or convince someone that he or she is dying. These symbols are everywhere around you.

They were in love! Carla wore her hair up and Andrew saw everything as a sign. They spent an entire afternoon sitting side by side in a coffee shop, taking more meaning than necessary from the world around them. A man wearing boxing gloves walked down the sidewalk in front of them and they took that to mean they would be together forever.

Those very superficial sensualists and profligates who lead the dance of Latin decadence have not seen, among their dancing girls and their pennies, that the disappearance of symbols was a precursor to the ruin of a people; communities only have abstract reasons for existing...

The absence of symbols in our life debases it as much as any government can...

Symbols meant something, but they could also exist to confuse the eye.

[French] toys ... reveal the list of all the things the adult does not find unusual: war, bureaucracy, ugliness, Martians, etc. It is not so much, in fact, the imitation which is the sign of an abdication, as its literalness…

I found I missed the compelling riddle-like quality of especially tricky math problems, that tight flourish of logic unfolding step by step. This is probably the same quality that also attracts me to particularly tricky poems. In both cases, a sense of wonder animates the premise: how can these constructed symbols mean something true about the world?

The truth is a symbol, and symbols are the truth. It is best to grasp symbols the way they are. There’s no logic or facts, no pig’s belly button or ant’s balls. When people try to use a method other than the truth to follow along the path of understanding, it is like trying to use a sieve to hold water.

It has been said that the first black presidency was mostly “symbolic,” a dismissal that deeply underestimates the power of symbols. Symbols don’t just represent reality but can become tools to change it.