Iconoclasm Quotes

In war, the first thing that goes, when you try to take over culture, is the statues. I think we all can recall statues with their heads cut off in museums.

In the long revolt against inherited forms that has by now become the narrative of 20th-century poetry in English, no poet was more flamboyant or more recognizable in his iconoclasm than Cummings.

On the horizon loom a growing number of iconoclasts and Atheists, young black men and women who can read think and ask questions; and who impertinently demand to know why Negroes should revere a god that permits them to be lynched, Jim-Crowed, and disenfranchised.

It's the orders you disobey that make you famous.

We have destroyed 80 percent of the statues. There is only small amount left and we will destroy that soon.

Yeah, I think people are drawn to characters that break the rules.

Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!

We came down on them like a flood! We went out among their cities! We tore down the idol-temples, We shat on the Buddha's head!

There's always a backlash when you challenge people's convictions and their heroes.

'Preacher' really appeals to my iconoclastic nature because I'm a student of comparative world religions since my early 20s, so I love shows that really challenge what you think about all these things. I think it's genius. I was so excited there was a role I could play on it.

I started casting. I cast music videos, but I kept getting fired from jobs because I was iconoclastic in my ways of casting.

I will concede to you one thing - 'Hustler' is offensive, even to the point of being iconoclastic. That's our purpose - to be offensive.

The historian's first duties are sacrilege and the mocking of false gods. They are his indispensable instruments for establishing the truth.

The toppling of idols - even respectable, admired, best-practice, fastest-growing idols - is always the road to liberation.

Wherever I see some mystique, be it virtue or family, faith or fatherland, there I must commit some indecent act.

We've always been a nation of heretics.

The Christian is an idol breaker.

In the reign of the Greek Emperor Justinian , and again in the reign of Phocas , the Bishop of Rome obtained some dominion over the Greek Churches, but of no long continuance. His standing dominion was only over the nations of the Western Empire, represented by Daniel's fourth Beast.

Each generation takes a special pleasure in removing the household gods of its parents from their pedestals, and consigning them to the cupboard.

This grossly advertised wonder [Venice], this gold idol with clay feet, this trompe-l'oeil, this painted deception, this cliche-what intelligent iconoclast could fail to experience a destructive impulse in her presence?

I am not an icon.

Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said, Thou shalt make no graven image.

I'm Valentino Rossi. And I want to be a person, not an icon.

If you want to make a name for yourself, the oldest trick in the book is to attack what everybody else reveres.