Monumental Symbolism Quotes

What was moving, I think, was the fact that the statue is a woman and not a heroic, manly figure. So for all her scale and immensity, there's something soft about the Statue of Liberty, something tender about her.

With monuments as with men, position means everything.

The great monuments are raised up like dams, pitting the logic of majesty and authority against all the shady elements: it is in the form of cathedrals and palaces that Church and State speak and impose silence on the multitudes.

It appears to be monumental only because it's art.

We had a lot of difficulty in getting the French to accept the pyramid. They thought we were trying to import a piece of Egypt until I pointed out that their obelisk was also from Egypt and the Place des Pyramides is around the corner. Then they accepted it. The pyramid at the Louvre, though, is just the tip.

When smashing monuments, save the pedestals - they always come in handy.

I have a wonderful make-up crew. They're the same people restoring the Statue of Liberty.

I don't think all buildings have to be iconic, but the history of the world has shown us that cultures build iconic buildings for their major public buildings.

A monument should be singular. Fate and happenstance have endowed this democracy with a constellation of remarkably varied and aesthetically impressive representations of our national adventure, and this endowment should be enlarged with care.

Statues are one of the ways I try to test the traditions of European culture against the most modern destructive forces. I often make a point of seeking them out and have used them as mouthpieces in my film poetry, as with Heinrich Heine in 'The Gaze of the Gorgon.'

This monument is going to be built as a symbol.

I think of a monument as being symbolic and for the people and therefore rhetorical, not honest, not personal.

What makes the Lincoln Memorial so powerful is that it doesn't try to do too much. In effect, it says that he saved the Union.

I like the word monument, because the word monument is a Latin word.

And it is very moving because one has to see the site not as just another site of development but it is a very special site. It is a site that souls and hearts of all Americans.

Yes, I played inside the Taj Mahal, but the experience was also a quiet, inner experience.

Activating is about changing people's perceptions of overlooked or invisible spaces. A building can become an archetype, invisible, like for a New Yorker, for example, the Statue of Liberty. You look at it, and it disappears into the thousands of times you've already seen it.

Stone Mountain Memorial is the greatest project of its sort ever conceived. It should be finished, because it represent an idea as deep, as basic as the rocks on which our wonderful continent rests.