Symbols Quotes

I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.

The underlying, primary psychic reality is so inconceivably complex that it can be grasped only at the farthest reach of intuition, and then but very dimly. That is why it needs symbols.

Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws.

The symbols of the self arise from the depths of the body.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth... Through words and concepts we shall never reach beyond the wall off relations, to some sort of fabulous primal ground of things.

For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.

So the lion is the law-breaker. Just as to the primitive man the lion is the lawbreaker, the great nuisance, dangerous to human beings and to animals, that breaks into the Kraal at night and fetches the bull out of the herd: he is the destructive instinct.

The function of (heroic) symbols is to give you a sense of Aha! Yes, I know what it is, it's myself.

Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.

As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols.

Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

I don't get all choked up about yellow ribbons and American flags. I see them as symbols, and I leave them to the symbol-minded.

There is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are older than the historical man, which are inborn in him from the earliest times, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them.

A true symbol appears only when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt.

Belts are only good for holding up your pants

A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.