#symbols

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

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

— Joséphin Péladan

#symbols #life

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

Real shapes and real patterns are things you would observe in nature, like the marks on the back of a cobra's hood or the markings on a fish or a lizard. Imaginary shapes are just that, symbols that come to a person in dreams or reveries and are charged with meaning. ↗

— Jim Woodring

#charged #come #dreams #fish #hood

In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better. ↗

— John B. S. Haldane

#arousing #better #description #emotion #fact

We don't have too much ritual in our life anymore. And these life symbols which people rely on to keep their feeling of well being, that life is not too bad after all are required more and more. ↗

— John Hench

#anymore #bad #being #feeling #keep

Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#fiction #germans #holocaust #nazis #signs-and-symbols

I think all women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols. That's what our purpose is in this business. You're merchandised, you're a product. You're sold and it's based on sex. But that's okay. I think women should be empowered by that, not degraded. ↗

— Megan Fox

#business #degraded #empowered #hollywood #i

Countries under foreign command quickly forget their history, their past, their tradition, their national symbols, their way of living, often their own literary language. ↗

— Slobodan Milosevic

#countries #foreign #forget #history #language

Around 1967 Dan Bobrow wrote a program to do algebra problems based on symbols rather than numbers. ↗

— Marvin Minsky

#around #based #dan #numbers #problems