A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free. - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Sufficiently simple natural structures are predictable but uncontrollable, whereas sufficiently complex symbolic descriptions are controllable but unpredictable. - Howard Pattee
Twango's hospitality, though largely symbolic, does him credit. - Jack Vance
The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both. - Thomas Merton
Reality is symbolic. We build it using only the 26 symbols of the alphabet alongside images that speak to us on a linguistic level built from the 26 symbols of the alphabet. - Dean Cavanagh
Though we may choose to view them symbolically, dreams are actually no more or less symbolic than everyday waking reality. When the images and events don't conform to our view of reality, we call them symbols. When they do, we call them facts. - Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Food is symbolic of love when words are inadequate. - Alan D. Wolfelt
The externalization of memory [via the use of external symbolic storage systems] has altered the actual memory architecture within which humans think, which is changing the role of biological memory, the way in which the human brain deploys its resources, and the form of modern culture. - Merlin Donald
It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science. - Albert Einstein
People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media. - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Culture is a symbolic veil with which we hide our animal nature from ourselves … and other animals. - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The number and richness of man’s signifiers always surpasses the set of defined objects that could be termed signifieds. The symbolic function must always precede its object and does not encounter reality except when it precedes it into the imaginary… - Maurice Merleau-Ponty
It seems symbolic of this all-pervading unpredictability that those engaged in the perfection of the means of destruction have finally brought about a level of technical development where their aim, namely warfare, is on the point of disappearing altogether. - Hanna Arendt
The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic. - Anais Nin
As for my feelings toward 'Over the Rainbow,' it's become part of my life. It is so symbolic of all my dreams and wishes that I'm sure that's why people sometimes get tears in their eyes when they hear it. - Judy Garland
The belief that myths are somehow less true than the symbolic dream we call 'reality' may be the greatest myth of all. - Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Obviously, there must be some connection between the subordination of actual individuals and the grotesque exaltation of symbolic ones like Kim Il Sung. - Christopher Hitchens