#symbols

When quick results are imperative, the manipulation of the masses through symbols may be the only quick way of having a critical thing done. ↗

— John Grierson

#done #having #imperative #manipulation #masses

The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth. ↗

— Alan Wilson Watts

#nominalism #reality #symbols #art

As soon as we notice that certain types of event "like" to cluster together at certain times, we begin to understand the attitude of the Chinese, whose theories of medicine, philosophy, and even building are based on a "science" of meaningful coincidences. The classical Chinese texts did not ask what causes what, but rather what "likes" to occur with what. ↗

— M.L. von Franz

#jung #jungian #man-and-his-symbols #synchronicity #attitude

Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#beauty #breakfast-of-champions #kurt-vonnegut #sometimes #symbol

The mathematician, carried along on his flood of symbols, dealing apparently with purely formal truths, may still reach results of endless importance for our description of the physical universe. ↗

— Karl Pearson

#apparently #carried #dealing #description #endless

The girl dreams she is dangerously ill. Suddenly birds come out of her skin and cover her completely ... Swarms of gnats obscure the sun, the moon, and all the stars except one. That one start falls upon the dreamer. ↗

— C.G. Jung

#archetype #children #dreams #psychology #symbolism

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. ↗

— Amelia Gray

#signs #symbols #love

Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#columns #confused #emit #familiar #forests

My commitment to the Republican movement was pure and simply patriotism, a love of Australia... a desire or passion that all of our national symbols should be unequivocally and unambiguously Australian. ↗

— Malcolm Turnbull

#australian #commitment #desire #love #movement

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