Symbolic acts Quotes

The custom of burning a beneficent god is too foreign to later modes of thought to escape misinterpretation.

I don't know, but I always loved that image of a girl putting toenail polish on a guy - her boyfriend, or something like that. Or a guy waking up in the morning and reaching over and putting on his girlfriend's shirt. Like Keith Richards putting on one of Anita Pallenberg's blouses, or Courtney Love putting nail polish on Kurt Cobain.

I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.

Capitalism is a set of rituals.

People crown kings and queens at homecoming parades all the time. We do a lot of things in our society that are simply symbolic.

Posting a letter and getting married [sic] are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic, a thing must be irrevocable

There is a substantial difference between the President being able to wave to the crowd from a hospital window and being able to govern.

You the devil in drag. You can burn your cross, Well, I'll burn your flag.

History is the enactment of ritual on a permanent and universal stage; and its perpetual commemoration.

Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one's beloved... it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.

...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.

The trouble with "sacrifices as symbolic acts" is that the immediate impact on those for whom the sacrifice is made quickly fades, while the impact on those who actually make the sacrifice can go on and on.

In ancient Boeotia brides were carried home in vehicles whose wheels were burned at the door, in token, that they would never again be needed.