Symbolic Actions Quotes

I stand by this man (President George W. Bush). I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound.. with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

Ritual is the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit, as it were, of people's imaginative insight into life.

Words matter in foreign policy—even empty words.

I was not religious, but I liked rituals. I liked the idea of connecting an action with remembering.

I remember someone once asked Jack Kennedy why he was paying such close attention to the renovation of the square across from the White House, and he said, 'It may be the only thing my presidency is remembered for.'

Meetings are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum, wish to escape the tedium of solitary duties. They yearn for the prestige which accrues to the man who presides over meetings, and this leads them to convoke assemblages over which they can preside. Finally, there is the meeting which is called not because there is business to be done, but because it is necessary to create the impression that business is being done. Such meetings are more than a substitute for action. They are widely regarded as action.

Standing up for national anthem doesn't make you an Indian. Posting flags on social networks doesn't make you an Indian.

We’re not very good at policy making any more, but we are good at symbolism. So we do a lot of symbols.

I just think that everything is symbolic, and who you are determines everything that you do, small moves and big moves.

Putting the 10 commandments up to prevent crime is like putting 'Employees must wash hands' up to keep the piss out of your burger.

Your dreamer may do without a creed, but he always wants a ritual.

The point is, the political reporters are the ones who no longer understand the ritual they are covering. They keep searching for political meanings in the tepid events when a convention is now essentially a human drama and only that.

Many of the rites of passage, those rituals of growing up found in our society, are in the form of such comic, practical joking affairs--which we ignore in the belief that they possess no deeper significance. Yet it is precisely in their being regarded as unimportant that they take on importance. For in them we ritualize and dramatize attitudes which contradict and often embarrass the sacred values which we proclaim through our solemn ceremonies and rituals of nationhood.

Life tells you to take the elevator, but love tells you to take the stairs.

Mothers send strips to daughters to make a point. Daughters smack strips down on the breakfast table to make a point. My own mom sometimes cuts a strip out and sends it to me to make sure I understand her.

The function of ritual, as I understand it, is to give form to human life, not in the way of a mere surface arrangement, but in depth.

We wish with our hands, that's what we do as artists.

The entrance into Jerusalem has all the elements of the theatre of the absurd: the poor king; truth comes riding on a donkey; symbolic actions - even parading without a permit!