Perhaps the mistake I made at the start of my mandate is not understanding the symbolic dimension of the president's role and not being solemn enough in my acts. A mistake for which I would like to apologise or explain myself and which I will not make again. Now, I know the job.
The English monarchy is at best symbolic, whereas the Saudi monarchy is a bloodline, but it's also showing itself as a very primitive culture. So, I think we're moving further and further away from that kind of organization of humanity and the same I would say with religion. I think that organized religions, with the exception of Islam, are really falling by the wayside. People are starting to understand that the religious potential is within and that it's an individual pursuit.
. . . for limited purposes only, let me define religion as a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence.
Symbolic rearrangement of the past is of course an unavoidable aspect of all human attempts to make sense of the present.
Without the letters of condolence, telegrams of congratulations, and occasional postcards, the friendship of a separated friend is not a social reality. It has no existence without the rites of friendship. Social rituals create a reality which would be nothing without them. It is not too much to say that ritual is more to society than words are to thought. For it is very possible to know something and then find words for it. But it is impossible to have social relations without symbolic acts.
The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists of the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.
One cannot understate the importance of eliminating Bin Laden. He was a symbolic head of the organisation and, as we now know, an operational head of the organisation.
I like birthday cake. It's so symbolic. It's a tempting symbol to load with something more complicated than just 'Happy birthday!' because it's this emblem of childhood and a happy day.
Pantagruel was telling me that he believed the queen had given the symbolic word used among her subjects to denote sovereign good cheer, when she said to her tabachins, A panacea.
I firmly believe that intuitive or symbolic sight is not a gift but a skill - a skill based in self-esteem.
Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols.
A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free.
Yet when the hour of decision arrives, it turns out that many conservatives care as little as ever about administrative skill and executive accomplishment. Our party and our movement overwhelmingly respond to symbolic cues. Sarah Palin is exciting and appealing. But what kind of executive is she? None of us have even the remotest idea.
Mars is the symbolic and totally stimulating next objective that could so dominate the next century's exploration efforts. From Mars, the resources of all the asteroids will become readily available.
When women breached the power structure in the 1980s?two economies finally merged. Beauty was no longer just a symbolic form of currency: it literally became money.
Brazil obviously connotes something in my mind to do with desire, sexuality and freedom. In fantasy, in mythology, Rio is the iconography of the imagination. In essence, we're all sex tourists. I've never been to Rio and I've never been to a psychoanalytic convention, but in a sense, Rio is symbolic of desire, some sort of ultimate ecstasy.
It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist. ” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.
A merely symbolic religion does not threaten the ruling regime of materialistic science.
I think of many of my photographs as being obviously symbolic but not symbolically obvious. There isn't any specific correlation between the symbols in this image and any content that I have in mind.
To the media, I have become a symbolic figure, critical of China. According to the government, I am a dangerous threat.