A Quote by Kurt Vonnegut

Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes. — © Kurt Vonnegut
Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.
That’s what the human brain is there for—to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality behind our experience; then you have science and common sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia and delirium. More often there’s a mixture, part realistic and part fantastic; that’s religion.
What is beautiful for you may not be beautiful to someone else. Or whatever is beautiful here may not be beautiful there and what is sometimes beautiful today is not necessarily beautiful tomorrow. Perhaps this is the story of fashion and what makes it move forward, the fact that there is no decision whatsoever with what’s wrong.
One main reason why the separate nature of the science of operations has been little felt, and in general little dwelt on, is the shifting meaning of many of the symbols used in mathematical notation. First, the symbols of operation are frequently also the symbols of the results of operations.
When you see a person, do you just concentrate on their looks? It's just a first impression. Then there's someone who doesn't catch your eye immediately, but you talk to them and they become the most beautiful thing in the world. The greatest actors aren't what you would call beautiful sex symbols.
The twentieth-century artist who uses symbols is alienated because the system of symbols is a private one. After you have dealt with the symbols you are still private, you are still lonely, because you are not sure anyone will understand it except yourself. The ransom of privacy is that you are alone.
The thing about playing percussion is that you can create all these emotions that can be sometimes beautiful, sometimes really ugly, or sometimes sweet, sometimes as big as King Kong and so on. And so there can be a real riot out there, or it can be so refined.
I flee from symbols. I think those who don't want to solve problems go to the symbols. I'm looking for content.
The key to meditation is focusing on specific symbols. The symbols are the chakras.
Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.
An overwhelming majority of symbols in dreams are sexual symbols.
Meditation is a refocusing on symbols. It's not emptiness. We are using symbols, doorways to step from one world to another, from darkness into light, from death to immortality.
In fact a man in love or one consumed with hatred creates symbols for himself, as a superstitious man does, from a passion of conferring uniqueness on things or persons. A man who knows nothing of symbols is one of Dante's sluggards. This is why art mirrors itself in primitive rites or strong passions, seeking for symbols, revolving round the primitive taste for savagery, for what is irrational (blood and sex).
I think the aloe is one of South Africa's most powerful, beautiful and celebratory symbols. It survives out there in the wild when everything else is dried.
It is so easy for us theorists who build wonderful castles, beautiful ideas. Sometimes, it is remarkable, sometimes these beautiful ideas prove to be close to what the observations tell us. But often and also they turn out to be wrong.
Sometimes we don't even realize what we really care about, because we get so distracted by the symbols.
When the symbols are 'public' they usually act in an oblique manner, revealing themselves as archetypal symbols, which though familiar, have their central meanings obscured as is usual in esoteric imagery.
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