#symbol

No phonetic sign, except at a rudimentary, strictly speaking pre-linguistic level of vocal imitation, has any substantive relation or contiguity to that which it is conventionally and temporally held to designate. ↗

— George Steiner

#symbol #design

A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#images #mass-media #reflection #symbols #television

Some people like living in black and white worlds. Let them stay there. Appreciate all the colors you see in your world though. ↗

— Ashly Lorenzana

#black #colors #humanity #individuality #life

Like symbolism, decadence puts forth the idea that the function of literature is to evoke impressions and 'correspondences', rather than to realistically depict the world. ... the decadent aestheticized decay and took pleasure in perversity. In decadent literature, sickness is preferable to health, not only because sickness was regarded as more interesting, but because sickness was construed as subversive, as a threat to the very fabric of society. By embracing the marginal, the unhealthy and the deviant, the decadents attacked bourgeois life, which they perceived as the chief enemy of art. ↗

— Asti Hustvedt

#bourgeois #decadence #decadent #deviant #literature-decay

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. ↗

— Clifford Geertz

#religion #society #symbolism #symbols #men

Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is very tired, hurt and bewildered. ↗

— Clara Bow

#sex-symbol #hurt

as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency. ↗

— Slavoj Žižek

#fiction #ideology #imaginary #philosophy #real

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

— Joséphin Péladan

#symbols #life

I wake up every morning, look in the mirror and ask, 'Am I a sex symbol?' Then I go back to bed again. It's stupid to think that way. ↗

— Antonio Banderas

#am #ask #back #bed #every

I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#life #looking-back #past #path #symbols