Symbols have always been an integral part of human civilization, weaving tales that transcend the barriers of language, geography, and time. The power they hold is profound, encapsulating vast meanings into a singular form or image. Throughout history, philosophers, authors, and thinkers have mused over their significance, resulting in countless "Quotes about symbols" that shed light on their multifaceted nature.
In a digital age awash with information, symbols continue to be a beacon, guiding us to deeper insights and broader understandings, proving that sometimes, a single emblem can speak volumes more than a thousand words.
Quotes About Symbols (2024)
Symbols carry the weight of centuries, representing ideas, emotions, and tales that words might sometimes fail to convey. They are the silent whisperers of history, culture, and personal identity. Delve into these curated "Quotes about symbols" to understand the depth they hold within.
"Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes." - Kurt Vonnegut
"A symbol is always in general and, however precise its translation, an artist can restore to it only its movement." - Paul Valéry
"In symbols one observes an advantage in discovery which is greatest when they express the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it were, picture it." - Aristotle
"Symbols are the imaginative signposts of life." - Margot Asquith
"Symbols are the key to telepathy. The mind wraps its secrets in symbols; when we discover the symbols that shape our enemy's thought, we can penetrate the vault of his mind." - John C. Lilly
"The symbol is greater than visible substance... Unseen reality is symbolized by the seen." - Anandamayi Ma
"Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon the absolute truth." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology." - Martin Heidegger
"Symbols are nothing without the men who create them and nothing without the men who acknowledge them." - Antonio Porchia
"Symbols are the language of dreams." - Alfred Adler
"The symbol detaches itself from the concrete, floats above it, dominates it." - Gaston Bachelard
"A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort." - John Ruskin
"The purpose of symbols is to communicate, to convey messages which the conscious mind cannot hear." - Anthony Sampson
"To use symbols correctly is to think truthfully." - Marianne Moore
"In our minds, symbols are associated with something remote, grand and sacred." - Su Shi
"Symbols, by their very nature, enhance and broaden the meanings of the words they accompany." - Caroline Myss
"A symbol, in its origin, means a 'token by which one knows'." - Owen Barfield
"Symbols have a power which man is unable to resist or understand." - Graham Greene
"A symbol is an instrument of thought." - Alfred North Whitehead
"Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within." - Alfred Lord Tennyson
"Symbols are the language of a higher order, known to our subconscious mind." - Aiden Wilson Tozer
"Symbolism exists precisely for the purpose of conveying to the imagination what the intellect is not ready for." - Walter Hooper
"A symbol is a living thing in its own right." - Ariel Guttman
"The symbol is the unconscious experience, and the conscious expression of it." - Karen A. Signell
"Symbols, in fact, take the form of words before they appear as thoughts." - Joseph Joubert
"The true symbol does not merely point to something else, it contains in itself a structure which awakens our consciousness to a new awareness." - Heinrich Zimmer
"A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know." - Diane Arbus
"Symbols touch us in ways words cannot." - T.P. Chia
"Every symbol is a crystallization of its author's self-expression." - Bruce Lee
"Where the symbol awakens recollection, the sign would communicate knowledge." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Every visible thing in this world is a symbol of something invisible." - Philo of Alexandria
"The symbol is not a sign; the sign leaves nothing to intuition." - Henri Bergson
"Symbols are oracular forms—mysterious patterns creating vortices in the substances of the invisible world." - Manly P. Hall
"The symbol is the mediator and interpreter between thought and thing." - James Feibleman
"Symbols are the miracles of the imagination – its most vivid and dynamic language." - Nevill Drury
"Symbols are powerful because they are filled with the energy of the mind that holds them up." - Bayo Akomolafe
"A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing." - Paul Ricoeur
"Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneracy: it is inherent in the very texture of human nature." - Alfred North Whitehead
"Symbols are the natural speech of dreams: a language of images that needs no translation." - Carl Jung
"A symbol is a truth because it is analogous to that which it signifies." - Simone Weil
"We often use a symbol, a word, to screen ourselves from the fact." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Symbols hold the mind to truth but are not themselves the truth." - Aldous Huxley
"There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow and in music." - Jorge Luis Borges
"Everywhere in history, the way of truth and love has always won." - Mahatma Gandhi
"If you want to understand any culture, its symbols are the key." - Nancy J. Adler
"To see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour." - William Blake
"A symbol is not just an image, but is like a door into the deep layers of our psyche." - D. Stephenson Bond
"Symbols are bridges between the unnameable and the nameable, the no-thing-able and the thing-able, the unmanifest and the manifest." - Ken Wilber
"Symbols are the way things speak to us." - Mary Douglas
"A symbol is a sign which refers to the concrete, not in virtue of a fact of nature, but in virtue of an agreement, no matter what its origin." - Ferdinand de Saussure
"Symbols are a means of bringing mind and matter together." - Rudolf Steiner
"The symbol is not the same as reality. But for us, the symbol and reality are united." - Meister Eckhart
"Symbols are the imaginative signposts of life." - Michael Tsarion
"Symbols can replace words and will often say more in a single character than could be said in a page of prose." - Kevin Fortuna
"A true symbol appears only when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt." - Søren Kierkegaard
"The value of symbols is that they identify, stand for, or represent something else." - Alfred Korzybski
"The language of symbols is silent. Its understanding becomes an act of inner contemplation." - Keshav Malik
"The essence of symbols is to convey large meanings in small spaces." - Warren Chappell
"Symbols are pegs to hang ideas on." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Symbols are powerful things. They are the markers of our dreams, the shape of our thoughts, the stuff of legend." - Peter Beagle
"Symbols awaken dormant memories, buried deep within our subconscious." - Terence McKenna
"Symbols, like sacred places, are eternal; they cannot be destroyed." - Paulo Coelho
"The symbol has for its peculiar and characteristic function to express the mutual adaptation of apparently disparate meanings." - Lajos Kozma
"A symbol becomes more real than that which it represents." - Marty Rubin
"The symbol's reality is grounded in the memory and in the future of the beholder." - Ernst Cassirer
"The symbol is nothing if it is not spontaneous. It cannot be artificially constructed." - Anais Nin
"Symbols do not exist in isolation, but in a world, and they are the signs of its secrets." - Gaston Bachelard
"Everything visible hides something invisible." - René Magritte
"Symbols are the dreams of nature." - Amos Bronson Alcott
"Symbols are the miracles of the imagination – its most vivid and dynamic language." - Nevill Drury
"The symbol is superior to sense, but inferior to thought." - Sir Herbert Read
"A symbol is a living thing, not a mere dead sign." - Owen Barfield
"Symbols are not to instruct, but to awaken." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Symbols keep our hopes alive, remind us of our roots, and inspire our future." - Robert Rivers
"The symbol, in order to be a living thing, must dwell in the realm of the vague, the uncertain and the problematic." - R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz
"The power of symbols lies not in the symbols themselves but in our response to them." - Iain McGilchrist
"A symbol is something that represents more than its obvious and immediate meaning." - Philip Pullman
"Symbols are powerful reminders of our past and visions of our future." - Lailah Gifty Akita
"A symbol, like everything else, shows a double aspect. We must distinguish, therefore between the 'sense' and the 'meaning' of the symbol." - Carl Jung
"Symbols can be the very life of a story, or they can make it obvious and artificial." - Janet Burroway
"Symbols have the power to break through our conventional perception and to introduce a more profound manner of seeing." - Thomas Moore
"Symbols have the potential to channel profound, transformative energies." - Simon Chokoisky
"Every symbol has a deeper meaning that transcends its visual understanding." - Sanchita Pandey
"In all chaos, there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order." - Carl Jung
"To the primitive man, symbols were a mysterious and direct bridge to the invisible." - Tom Robbins
"Symbols remind us of the unfathomable world we live in, filled with mysteries, secrets, and transcendental experiences." - Michael Bassey Johnson
"Symbols arise from the depths of the unconscious and find their way into dreams and myths." - Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel
"Symbols serve as the bridge between the inner world of the mind and the external reality." - Israelmore Ayivor
"A symbol always unites a concrete thing and a meaning, which is psychological." - C. G. Jung
"The word is the shadow of the thing, but the image is its very form." - Marsilio Ficino
"We are symbols, and inhabit symbols." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Symbols are the archetype of understanding, the foundation of thought." - Anthony T. Hincks
"Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of mystery." - Robert Anson Heinlein
"Through symbols, humans can contemplate the infinite with their finite minds." - Lawrence Durrell
"Symbols serve as the bridge between the storyteller and the listener." - Brian McDonald
"There is in every symbol an element that is not be explained." - Victor Hugo
"Symbols convey realities and understandings that words often cannot." - James A. Owen
"Symbols are the seeds of understanding and the fountainhead of knowledge." - Robert Fitzgerald
"Our lives are filled with symbols that resonate within us. They aren’t just words or images; they are context-driven manifestations of our human experience." - Deepak Chopra
"The visible world is the invisible organization of energy." - Physicist Heinz Pagels
"The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal." - Wassily Kandinsky
"The true function of a symbol is to convey to the mind, by way of the senses, a set of ideas which need not be expounded at length, being more easily recognized by the mind than described by the voice." - Percy Gardner
"Symbol is the language of the dream, the ferment of the idea." - Victor Hugo
"Symbols carry memories which, in turn, carry the essence and vitality of the experience itself." - Gary Z. McGee
"Symbols reflect the deepest layers of our psyche, revealing secrets we often hide from our conscious minds." - Abhijit Naskar
"The symbol is the most sensitive medium of psychic experience, to express what might otherwise be inexpressible." - M.L. Von Franz
"A symbol is an energy-evoking and directing agent of its underlying image." - Joseph Campbell
"Symbols are the bridges to our past, the guardians of our present, and the gateway to our future." - Saleem Sharma
"Symbols hold a silent power that words often cannot express." - Germaine Greer
"The symbol enriches the soul which recognizes in it deep memories of the stages of its endless evolution." - Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
"Quotes about symbols" shed light on the profound connection between human consciousness and the symbols that surround us. These reflections and insights unveil the intricate relationship between the tangible and the intangible, emphasizing the power symbols hold in shaping our perceptions, memories, and emotions.
Through these quotes, we are reminded of the depth of human experience and the myriad ways in which symbols articulate and give form to the unspoken intricacies of our inner world.
