Quotes about icon (109 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Without a doubt, Banksy is the most influential street artist in the world today. It took him many years vandalizing the streets of London with his iconic stencils to receive a worldwide recognition. I am not sure, but I don’t think there is any city or any police department in the world that wants to have a vandal that is so famous as Banksy.”

Clandestine Culture (1970) American artist

http://artdistricts.com/clandestine-culture-between-street-art-and-social-activism/

World , Thinking

“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes relentlessly persecute them, and treat their teachings with malicious hostility, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaign of lies and slanders. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping them, while at the same time emasculating the revolutionary doctrine of its content, vulgarizing it and blunting its revolutionary edge.'”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

1.1, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
(1917)
Source: The State and Revolution

Death , Hostility , Time

“I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people's minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.”

Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) British actress

Source: How to be Lovely‎ (2005), p. 143

People , Thinking

“Attention is not a mysterious concentration of psychic energy; it is simply an allotment of analyzing mechanisms to a limited region of the field. To pay attention to a figure is to make certain analyses of, or certain constructions in, the corresponding part of the icon.”

Ulric Neisser (1928–2012) American psychologist

Source: Cognitive Psychology, 1967, p. 88-89

Parting

“There are two words I hate and despise and don’t want to hear: red carpet and iconic.”

Caroline, Princess of Hanover (1957) Princess of Monaco

Hate

“My style icon is none other than Grace Kelly. She was not only classy but was also a fantastic woman who had a lot of grace.”

Sukirti Kandpal (1987) Indian actress

On her favourite style icon http://www.tellychakkar.com/tv/features/tv-actresses-pick-their-favourite-style-icons-337/

“Think about an icon we just lost — Prince. He blew up categories. People didn’t know what Prince was doing. … And folks loved him for it.
You need to have the same confidence.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Howard University commencement address (May 2016)
Context: You can create your own style, set your own standard of beauty, embrace your own sexuality. Think about an icon we just lost — Prince. He blew up categories. People didn’t know what Prince was doing. … And folks loved him for it.
You need to have the same confidence. Or as my daughters tell me all the time, “You be you, Daddy.” … Sometimes Sasha puts a variation on it — "You do you, Daddy." … And because you’re a black person doing whatever it is that you're doing, that makes it a black thing. Feel confident.

Love , People , Confidence , Thinking

“To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

People , Communication

“Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

God , Religion , Feeling , Idea

“But when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create.”

Mohsin Hamid book How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Source: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Books , Imagination , Reading

“I thought a lot about the beauty of Leonardo's Mona Lisa, we have two expressions that are composed on the same icon: usually to express an expression our whole body moves in that direction, to create another expression we need a different time. These two times, the sadness and the smile, which point out our duality are characterized at the same time. It creates a displacement. It's as if we could not grasp both things together. Hence the perception of that extraordinary beauty.”

Umberto Pettinicchio (1943) Italian painter

Umberto Pettinicchio late interview https://www.shantimandir.eu/la-spiritualita-oltre-liconarelazione-umberto-pettinicchio/, La spiritualita’ oltre l’icona, shantimandir.eu, 2001.

Sadness , Smile , Beauty , Time

“I save myself in a church. Dark, empty. Lights flickering before icons. One sings everything that one has sung before in the past. Some black figures - and the heart is heavy. The tears take one's breath away and the past rises up again. Home.... in Peter's office [Marianne's brother, governor of Kovno Province, Lithuania], my entire soul starts to ache for him, for that battle for everything that is sweet and good, which is called Russian life. Empty, empty in the house, no one. Whoever comes - doesn't get his fill of him. And then such a heated rush of love rips out of the [visitor's] heart, begging one's pardon and forgetting the trouble behind, that the whole house swells.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

1906 - 1911
Source: a letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, between December 1909 and Spring 1910; as quoted in 'Ambiguity of Home: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home, c. 1909', Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909

Love , Life , Home , Soul

“The great majority of experimental psychologists relate to the tradition of their field in much the same way as physicists. Their look at the past might take the form of a review of the literature in a specific research area, and perhaps they would go so far as to take time off for celebrating a few icons on appropriate ceremonial occasions, but there is no room in their world for a reflective or critical history. They would gladly leave anything like that to the professional historians without any sense of having surrendered something that might have the slightest relevance to their own research interests. In the U. S. this attitude may be more widespread than elsewhere, and it is certainly accompanied by a growing tendency for the history of psychology to be taken up by historians rather than psychologists, but of course, the same attitudes are to be found wherever there are psychological laboratories.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: "Does the history of psychology have a future?." 1994, p. 472

World , Way , History , Literature

“In what people irritatingly call "iconic" terms, Bin Laden certainly had no rival. The strange, scrofulous quasi-nobility and bogus spirituality of his appearance was appallingly telegenic, and it will be highly interesting to see whether this charisma survives the alternative definition of revolution that has lately transfigured the Muslim world. The most tenaciously lasting impression of all, however, is that of his sheer irrationality. What had the man thought he was doing? Ten years ago, did he expect, let alone desire, to be in a walled compound in dear little Abbottabad?…Ten years ago, I remind you, he had a gigantic influence in one rogue and failed state—Afghanistan—and was exerting an increasing force over its Pakistani neighbor. Taliban and al-Qaida sympathizers were in senior positions in the Pakistani army and nuclear program and had not yet been detected as such. Huge financial subventions flowed his way, often through official channels, from Saudi Arabia and other gulf states…. Then, not only did he run away from Afghanistan, leaving his deluded followers to be killed in very large numbers, but he chose to remain a furtive and shady figure, on whom the odds of a successful covert "hit," or bought-and-paid-for betrayal, were bound to lengthen every day…It seems thinkable that he truly believed his own mad propaganda, often adumbrated on tapes and videos, especially after the American scuttle from Somalia. The West, he maintained, was rotten with corruption and run by cabals of Jews and homosexuals. It had no will to resist. It had become feminized and cowardly. One devastating psychological blow and the rest of the edifice would gradually follow the Twin Towers in a shower of dust. Well, he and his fellow psychopaths did succeed in killing thousands in North America and Western Europe, but in the past few years, their main military triumphs have been against such targets as Afghan schoolgirls, Shiite Muslim civilians, and defenseless synagogues in Tunisia and Turkey. Has there ever been a more contemptible leader from behind, or a commander who authorized more blanket death sentences on bystanders?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2011-05-02
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/05/death_of_a_madman.html
Death of a Madman
Slate
1091-2339
2010s, 2011

Death , People , World , Way

“Darling, you look like a religious icon there [in her high school graduation picture].”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comment by Isaac, host of Style Network fashion program (December 15, 2006)
2007, 2008

School

“The Pink Panther is supposed to use humor to uplift. Instead, I departed this movie feeling depressed. Lifeless comedies can suck the energy out of a viewer, especially when they sully the image of an cinematic icon.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=810 of The Pink Panther (2006).
One-star reviews

Feeling

“Most of us know Ed Bradley from his 25 years of work on the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes, and his many interviews with world figures, celebrities and cultural icons. The men and the women who sat in the chair across from Bradley doing his 60 Minutes interviews were figures of importance, people to whom we should pay attention, and we could rely on Bradley to make sure that no skeleton in the darkest corner of his subject's closet was safe from the tenacious journalists.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Congressman Danny K. Davis, Congressional Record, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2006-12-06/html/CREC-2006-12-06-pt2-PgH8798-3.htm, Honoring the Contributions and Life of Edward R. Bradley, H8798-H8800; Volume 152, Number 133, December 6, 2006, United States House of Representatives , printed by the United States Government Printing Office]
About

Women , Men , People , World

“Those in the Ivy League, Hollywood, the media, the leftist rich, and most schools and universities who, like Obama, consider themselves superior intellectuals earmarked by some demented destiny to implement their pagan, socialist, and anti-human ideology in the United States. They first mean to destroy the Second Amendment, and then, safe to be tyrants, though cowards all, they intend remake in their own worthless image those Americans who still work hard, who believe in and are willing to fight to defend liberty, and who have learned the Founders' key lesson, namely, that the federal government must always be seen as an enemy of freedom and therefore must be kept in check and opposed to the hilt whenever necessary. Perhaps it would be best if Obama and his Ivy-League elite studied the words of a man they hail an icon of their party and with whom they share a liking for slavery, but who actually is a man they do not in the least understand.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in "Obama and his party offer America's young … death, misery, and slavery" http://non-intervention.com/1143/obama-and-his-party-offer-america%E2%80%99s-young-%E2%80%A6-death-misery-and-slavery/ (2013), by M. Scheuer, Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention.
2010s

School , Understanding , Study , Freedom

“Maps have been a successful form of representation for centuries by making the world understandable through systematic abstraction that retains the iconicity of space depicting space. Advances in methods and technologies are blurring the lines among maps and other forms of visual representation and pushing the bounds of “map” as a concept toward both more realistic and more abstract depiction. As a result, there are a variety of unanswered questions about the attributes and implications of “maps.””

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: Research challenges in geovisualization (2001), p. 6-7

World , Understanding , Question , Success

“Well, the New York Times editorial board, that reliable abettor of all the liars, haters, and fantasists, aka Democrats, who detest the American South and lust to rewrite America's history into party-serving fiction, has endorsed dumping Andrew Jackson in favor of rewarding a woman with his place on the twenty dollar bill. So fundamentally important to the nation is this switch that the Board’s reputedly adult members have decided that the only group sober and knowledgeable enough to decide how to destroy another piece of American history and further persecute the South is 'the nation's schoolchildren' who should be made to 'nominate and vote on Jackson’s replacement. Why not give them another reason to learn about women who altered history and make some history themselves by changing American currency?' Why of course, what geniuses! And, then, why not let these kids — who cannot figure out that the brim of baseball cap goes in the front — go on to decide other pressing national issues. Maybe they can replace General Washington on the $1 bill with a Muslim woman and thereby end America's war with Islam. As the saying goes, you could not make this stuff up. Now Andrew Jackson was not the most unblemished of men, but he risked his life repeatedly for his country; killed its enemies; expanded U. S. territory in North America; defeated the British at New Orleans; was twice elected president; and faced down and was prepared to hang the South Carolina nullifiers when he believed they were seeking to undermine and break the Union. Jackson is one of those southern fellows, and so he is now a target for banishment from our currency and eventually our history because he did not treat slaves and Indians as if they were his equals and, indeed, inflicted pain on both. But he also was, along with Thomas Jefferson, another insensitive chap toward blacks and Indians, the longtime icon of the Democratic Party and its great self-praising and fund-raising feast, the annual 'Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner', which was, of course, a fervent tribute to those that General Jackson would have hanged without blinking.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

Life , Women , Men , Pain

“Chinese script is not visual but iconic and tactile. It does not disturb the tribal bonds.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1970s, Culture Is Our Business (1970), p. 72

“The only American woman deserving a place on U. S. paper currency is, of course, Anne Hutchinson, a devout 17th century Protestant New Englander who was a fearless champion of religious liberty, family, free speech, and equality — not preference — for women in religious affairs. Perhaps a new piece of currency could be created, one to which the attachment of her portrait would do honor. Ms. Hutchinson, however, is out of contention in the Democrats’ virulent anti-Southern currency crusade because her character traits – and the fifteen children she had with one husband — just do not jive with being Modern Democratic Party Women, those who glory in, and seek legal, economic, and political preference for their talents in whining, vamping, aborting, as well as recognition for their indispensable and eagerly given help in making the United States one of the world’s industrial-scale producers of both pornography and the dismembered corpses of infants. There may be something that can be done, however. The portrait of another Democratic icon named Woodrow Wilson now adorns the $100,000 bill, which appears to be to be used mainly in transactions.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

Women , Children , World , Family

“I think if I directly design their apartment, I will not help them… If you are rich and famous and you buy an apartment (house) and you don't know what to do, you will rent an interior designer. But in the end you will not make your own home. You will take the prefab life made by your interior designer and that is stupid. With ICON you will do it yourself.”

Philippe Starck (1949) French architect and industrial designer

Starck (2006) in: "Starck Ting: March 2006" at starckting.blogspot.com, 2006-03-01

Life , Stupidity , Home , Thinking

“I deplore the decision of the junta in Myanmar to continue the illegal house arrest of Nobel peace prize laureate and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Statement: on the latest conviction of Aung San Suu Kyi

Peace , Democracy , Decision , Housing

“Fame factories develop and promote hip icons who exude superior airs.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

State of the Art (2000)

“I love Nicole. Nicole and I happen to be very great friends. Besides that, the press never get it straight. They do not print what you say… We were in Venice for Birth at the Venice Film Festival. And you know when you have a day when you go from one room to another with the roundtables with about five journalists sitting around at each table throwing questions at you all the time. So in one of these rooms, I'm sitting there. And one of the journalists said, you're an icon and Nicole Kidman's an icon and what do you think about that? And I said, why do you have to burden her with the category? She's a young woman. She's got her whole career ahead of her. Why does she have to be pegged as an icon or as anything? Let her enjoy her time. Don't, you know, suddenly put her in a slot. And that was all I said. The word "legend" never came up. It was "icon."”

Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) American actress, model

On being quoted in 2004 as saying about Nicole Kidman: "She's not a legend. She's a beginner..."
"She's not a legend," Bacall said. "She can't be a legend at whatever age she is. … You have to be older."
Larry King interview (2005)

Love , Birth , Question , Thinking

“A lex icon.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

Describing the Oxford English Dictionary in The Globe & Mail http://wordsmith.org/awad/article-globeandmail.html

“Not very far from here stood two towers that symbolized freedom, prosperity and progress. Half way around the globe stood two magnificent Buddha's that represented a culture of tolerance and a nation with a rich history. These symbols have been linked together through the global scourge of terrorism. Terror may have demolished these physical structures, however it strengthens the willpower of the international community never to let down the spirit and determination with which these icons were built”

Hamid Karzai (1957) President of Afghanistan

studies.roashan.com/Contributions/Commentaries/DRRoashanArch/2002_09_14_karzai_gets_to_tell_the_world.htm Address to the United Nations http://institute-for-afghan (September 12, 2002]
2002

Way , History , Communication , Freedom

“Madonna is the only modern celebrity who is truly a style icon. Who else has the audacity to dress like her these days? She really influenced how I wanted to look when I was growing up, and made me realize that I didn’t have to look like a blond beach bunny or a Playboy model.”

Dita Von Teese (1972) American burlesque dancer, model and actress

Praising Madonna for inspiring her to be an individual http://www.contactmusic.com/news/von-teese-madonna-inspired-me-to-be-individual_1037902 (18 July 2007).

“What concerns me right now is that with the actions of Dr Mahathir, who is a lauded statesman and a beloved international icon, the country could become unstable, driving away foreign investors from this nation at the same time. As a former Prime Minister, he should be more understanding of what democracy is, which cannot be achieved the way Dr Mahathir is going about it now.”

Mahathir bin Mohamad (1925) Prime Minister of Malaysia

Malaysia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Anifah Aman said in a statement on Saturday (Mar 5) that he was both surprised and disappointed with Dr Mahathir, quoted on Channel News Asia, "Dr Mahathir movement will be bad for country: Malaysia Foreign Affairs Minister" http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/dr-mahathir-movement-will/2575782.html, March 5, 2016.

Way , Democracy , Understanding , Time

“We got email today from an LGF reader who was browsing the Lexis research system and discovered that anti-American, anti-capitalist icon Noam Chomsky has embarrassingly capitalist tastes; among other expensive property he owns a 36,155 square foot home near Cambridge, a 13,503 square foot vacation home, and four boats. And we won’t even mention the cars. Teaching kids to hate their own country seems to pay quite well.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

July 23, 2002 http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=3577&only

Hate , Cars , Home , Country

“But people have been acting as though no white man can mention or praise or support the mission of Martin Luther King. I'm sorry, African Americans don't own Martin Luther King; it's a human idea, just like white people don't own George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. These are American icons and ideas, and we are all Americans.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
2010-07-12
00:25:43
Beck: African-Americans "don't own Martin Luther King"
2010-07-12
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201007120051
2010s, 2010

People , Idea , Support

“I don't necessarily consider myself to be an icon, but I do consider myself to be a feminist.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

When asked if she considered herself to be a feminist icon – given the many strong female characters she portrayed — "Dallas Comic Con - May 2015 - The X Files - Gillian Anderson" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlIctMT6JpU/ (May 31, 2015)
2010s

“Once knowing is no longer understood as the search for an iconic representation of ontological reality but, instead, as a search for fitting ways of behaving and thinking, the traditional problem disappears. Knowledge can now be seen as something which the organism builds up in the attempt to order the as such amorphous flow of experience by establishing repeatable experiences and relatively reliable relations between them. The possibilities of constructing such an order are determined and perpetually constrained by the preceding steps in the construction. That means that the “real” world manifests itself exclusively there where our constructions break down. But since we can describe and explain these breakdowns only in the very concepts that we have used to build the failing structures, this process can never yield a picture of a world that we could hold responsible for their failure.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher

Glasersfeld (1984) "An Introduction to Radical Constructivism", as cited in: Frederick Burwick, Walter Pape (1990) Aesthetic Illusion: Theoretical and Historical Approaches. pp.26-27

World , Way , Search , Failure

“In this chapter I want to raise the question partly in jest but partly also in seriousness whether the concept of the image cannot become the abstract foundation of a new science, or at least a cross-disciplinary specialization. As I am indulging in the symbolic communication of an image of images I will even venture to give the science a name — Eiconics — hoping thereby to endow it in the minds of my readers with some of the prestige of classical antiquity. I run some risk perhaps of having my new science confused with the study of icons. A little confusion, however, and the subtle overtones of half-remembered associations are all part of the magic of the name.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Robert A. Solo (1994) commented: "Curiously, and quite independently of the publication of the The Image, there did occur in the 1950s and in the decades that followed a revolutionary transformation of the social and behavioral sciences associated with the term structuralism, which hinged on the concept and study of the image (call it cognitive structure, or paradigm, or episteme, or ideology). This was the case in the work of Jean Piaget in psychology, of Thomas Kuhn and Michael Foucault in the history and philosophy of science, of Noam Chomsky in linguistics, of Claude Levi Strauss in anthropology, and others. Though The Image was the first and in my view by far the finest American structuralist essay, it had no visible impact on economics... The economist's image of his world is alas very difficult to penetrate and even more difficult to change."
Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 128

Hope , Communication , Question , Study

“Every artist works within a tradition. I am a native of Russia. My Russian soul has always been close to the art of old Russia, the Russian icons, Byzantine art, the mosaics in Ravenna, Venice, Rome, and to Romanesque art. All these artworks produced a religious vibration in my soul, as I sensed in them a deep spiritual language. This art was my tradition.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

quote from his letter to the National Socialist State Cultural administration, 1939; Jawlensky asked permission to exhibit his painting art, which was turned down by the Nazi regime
Source: 1936 - 1941, Life Memories' (1938), p. 24

Art , Soul , Sense

“Now I behold as in a mirror, in an icon, in a riddle, life eternal, for that is naught other than that blessed regard wherewith Thou never ceasest most lovingly to behold me, yea, even the secret places of my soul. With Thee, to behold is to give life; 'tis unceasingly to impart sweetest love of Thee; 'tis to inflame me to love of Thee by love's imparting, and to feed me by inflaming, and by feeding to kindle my yearning, and by kindling to make me drink of gladness, and by drinking to infuse in me a fountain of life, and by infusing to make it increase and endure. 'Tis to cause me to share Thine immortality.... For it is the absolute maximum of every rational desire, than which a greater cannot be.”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

Theosophy Trust, Great Teachers Series http://www.theosophytrust.org/311-nicholas-of-cusa

Love , Life , Secret , Soul

“We have seen that though Cristna was said to have left many sons, he left his immense empire, which extended from the sources of the Indus to Cape Comorin, (for we find a Regio Pandionis near this point,) to his daughter Pandæa; but, from finding the icon of Buddha so constantly shaded with the nine Cobras, &c., I am induced to think that this Pandeism was a doctrine, which had been received both by Buddhists and Brahmins.”

Godfrey Higgins book Anacalypsis

Vol. I., p. 439.
Anacalypsis (published 1833)

Thinking , Daughters

“I have never had an experience (like 'Star Wars'), and that includes 'Jurassic Park,' of what it feels like to be a character to young children that feels otherworldly or iconic or whatever that is. So now, I've had this amazing experience of little kids seeing me and instead of wanting to talk about the movie, they kind of back away, a little scared. It's like when you go to Disneyland and see Mickey Mouse and you're little. It's a weird thing that 'Star Wars' holds something a bit untouchable or something like that.”

Laura Dern (1967) American actress, director, producer

As quoted in "Laura Dern says kids fear her since appearing in ‘Star Wars’" by James Desborough, New York Daily News (22 January 2018) http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/confidential/laura-dern-kids-fear-appearing-star-wars-article-1.3772851

War , Children , Feeling , Star

“On November 8, the feast of Saints Archangels Michael and Gabriel, we were discussing the possible name for this youth organization. I said: "Let it be 'Michael the Archangel'." My father said: "There is in the church, on the left hand door of the altar, an icon of St. Michael." "Let us go see it!" Mota, Garneata, Corneliu Georgescu, Radu Mironovici, Tudose and I went to look at it and we were truly amazed. The icon appeared to us of unsurpassed beauty. I was never, attracted by the beauty of any icon. But now, I felt bound to this one with all my soul and I had the feeling the Archangel was alive. Since then, I have come to love that icon. Any time we found the church open, we entered and prayed before that icon. Our hearts were filled with peace and joy.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), The Legion

Love , Youth , Peace , Beauty

“You want to talk about the fading of an icon? You never said I was an icon in the first place. But you want to talk about it in a derogatory fashion. You say the superstar has fallen. But you've never called me a superstar ever. It's only that you use these words when you want to say something derogatory.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Fashion

“Suppose you want to convert a bunch of pictures into icons. Suppose you know how to do that with one picture: you click on the file, "drag" it over to the icon-generating program, then "drop" it there. Repeat until thoroughly disgusted with the idiocy of the paradigm of direct manipulation. Suppose instead you were able to communicate your actual desire to the computer, in (gasp!) a language!”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: RFC: Lisp/Scheme with less parentheses through Python-like significant indentation? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/308ecb00b29198ba (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Communication

“I was actually really lucky to be a part of this iconic franchise and that my role is so iconic. By the way, these are things that never entered my consciousness. For one I was so young, and two I had no idea and did not predict the future for that movie. I’m so grateful for it and honored. I mean there’s crazy things like that role have been shown on the Oscars multiple times and also Wes and I were hanging in their director’s guild, that big poster of us for years. Things like that I’m honored and flabbergasted by. It’s fantastic and I’m very thankful because so much of my career flowed from that. It’s still mind-boggling to me!”

Amanda Wyss (1960) American actress

INTERVIEW WITH AMANDA WYSS OF ‘A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET’ & ‘THE ID’ http://horrorgeeklife.com/2016/11/10/interview-amanda-wyss/ (November 10, 2016)

Way , Idea , Time , Future

“Here with Ajax lies my heart,
a club fascinating, always unique.
By many named after sons of gods,
for me the origin of football icons.
My memories return to De Meer,
there too was found a special atmosphere.
Now I go after my feelings,
and technically enter the Arena.
In my life phase this is a new chance,
and my childhood love gets an extra impulse.
And that's why I state with full conviction,
today the circle is really complete.”

Louis van Gaal (1951) Dutch footballer and manager

Poem to commemorate his installation as technical director of AFC Ajax in October 2003

Love , Life , God , Feeling

“Sri Sathya Sai Baba as a preacher of the highest human values was an iconic figure for over five decades. He endeared himself to the people through various institutions, with headquarters at Prashanthi Nilayam, that promoted egalitarian values, education and public health.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

In an eulogy to Sathya Sai Baba, as quoted in "Nation mourns Sai Baba's death, Manmohan Singh calls him iconic figure" http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-nation-mourns-sai-babas-death-manmohan-singh-calls-him-iconic-figure-1535718, DNA India (24 April 2011)
2011-present

People , Health , Education

“Even though Kurt died in the most horrific way possible, there is this mythology and romanticism that surrounds him, because he's 27 forever. The shelf life of an artist or musician isn't particularly long. Kurt has gotten to icon status because he will never age. He will always be that relevant in that time and always be beautiful.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

" Frances Bean Cobain on Life After Kurt's Death: An Exclusive Q&A http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/frances-bean-life-after-kurt-cobain-death-exclusive-interview-20150408" (2015)

Life , Age , Beauty , Way

“People who pass from stage two hallucination to stage three often experience a sensation of a vortex or rotating tunnel around them, and soon have hallucinations filled with iconic images, not just signs. …It is here that "monsters" appear, part human, part beast, known as therianthropes.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

People , Appearance , Parting

“My collages are only ideas for things much larger – things to cover walls. In fact all the things that I have done I would like to see much larger. I am not interested in painting as it has been accepted for so long – to hang on walls of houses as pictures. To hell with pictures – they should be the wall – even better – on the outside wall – of large buildings. Or stood up outside as billboards or a kind of modern 'icon'. We must make our art like the Egyptians, the Chinese & the African and the Island primitives – with their relation to life. It should meet the eye direct.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Quote in a letter to John Cage, 4 September 1950; as quoted in "Ellsworth Kelly, a Retrospective", ed. Diane Waldman, Guggenheim museum, New York 1997, p. 11
1950 - 1968

Life , Art , Idea , Hell

“Headlines are icons, not literature.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 5

Literature

“The fact that the span of apprehension averages only four or five… probably results from the high rate of encoding. In a tachistoscopic experiment the subject must read the fading icon as rapidly as possible.”

Ulric Neisser (1928–2012) American psychologist

Source: Cognitive Psychology, 1967, p. 42 ; As cited in: A.H.C. Van der Heijden, "Visual attention," in: Handbook of Perception and Action, Vol. 3. 1996

Reading

“Icons, windows, mice, big operating systems, huge programs, integrated packages…. I would like to remind the world that just because two things are on the same menu doesn't mean they taste good together.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

Programmers At Work (1986)

World

“So nice to be a fashion icon in my day.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

On a Saturday Night Live skit featuring her in a pantsuit. Rhode Island, February 2008.
Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

Fashion

“I remember watching Gene Hackman, or Robert Duvall. To just see them as actors. You think of them as these icons. But you see them mess up their lines, flub their lines, whatever, you just see the human being. But then when they're "in" it's totally about playing pretend. The game of it.”

Ray Liotta (1954) American actor

As quoted in "Tribeca Film Festival Interview: Ray Liotta Takes a Rare Comedic Turn in Snowmen" by Cynthia Ellis at Huffington Post (26 April 2010) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cynthia-ellis/tribeca-film-festival-int_b_551768.html

Game , Thinking

“Lips… were ubiquitous in the ‘50s, when a few icons of womanhood were tattooed onto my temporal lobes.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

“ Fire and Ice http://www.cadillaccicatrix.org/andrea_lewis.htm,” Cadillac Cicatrix (2009)
2000-09

Tattoo

“The original 1954 Japanese film, Gojira was iconic, and only made a couple mistakes of any significance. (1)They killed him in the end, and we saw his body turned to skeleton. Not the best way to begin 60 years worth of sequels. (2) Godzilla was depicted as a dinosaur, and was associated with living trilobites. Even if there was some sort of ‘realm that time forgot’ out in the Pacific somewhere, Trilobites were already extinct before the first dinosaurs, and Godzilla was clearly no dinosaur. The conceptual artists reportedly referenced illustrations of dinosaurs, but that’s not what they rendered. All bi-pedal dinosaurs [Therapods] were digigrade, walking on their toes, like birds, and usually only three or four digits. Godzilla was plantigrade and pentadactyle, (having five digits and walking on the whole foot) just like lizards. It even looks like a lizard, apart from the fact that no reptile has an actual nose or external ears. In a sense, what Toho pictures created was actually an oriental dragon. These tend to mix reptilian and mammalian traits. Amusingly in 1954, Toho made a giant lizard and called it a dinosaur. In 1998, Tristar re-designed Godzilla as a dinosaur, but called it a lizard. Of course that wasn’t the only thing Tristar did wrong. They tried to ruin the monster completely. They took away the only thing that worked in decades of sequels, the look of the monster itself. Then they took away everything that made Godzilla appealing to Kaiju fans, then they tied it down and shot it. Such disrespect. If you’re going to make a movie that already has a fan-base, and they are the ones who will decide whether your film will pay off, respect those fans and the story they’re paying to see.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Weighing in on Godzilla http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2014/06/08/weighing-in-on-godzilla/ (June 8, 2014)

Way , Bird , Sense , Time

“He was a tennis icon but when he won the French Open I wasn't even born, I'm from a generation that knows him as a singer.”

Gilles Simon (1984) French tennis player

“The judge looked about him. He was sat before the fire naked save for his breeches and his hands rested palm down upon his knees. His eyes were empty slots. None among the company harbored any notion as to what this attitude implied, yet so like an icon was he in his sitting that they grew cautious and spoke with circumspection among themselves as if they would not waken something that had better been left sleeping.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Sleep

“It is the right time for him to retire, the best time that Kumble would have looked for. He has done a great job for India and is leaving on a high. He has made his debut under me in the state. He has been a dedicated, sincere, honest, disciplined and good thinking and a great champion cricketer and on the basis on these I can say that I have literally seen him grow and establish himself as a icon and a legendary cricketer both on the field and off it.”

Anil Kumble (1970) Former Indian cricketer

By Syed Kirmani.
Kumble Calls it a Day: Quotes... For and By Kumble...

Thinking , Time , Sincerity

“When you compare the icons of the game, you have Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar and Dhoni in the same bracket.”

MS Dhoni (1981) Indian cricket player

Ravi Shastri https://www.scoopwhoop.com/sports/dhoni-quotes/

Game

“M. I. A.: No. My fashion icon is Colonel [Muammar al-] Gaddafi, and he always has been. He’s rock ’n’ roll.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Sourced quotes, Interview with Romain Gavras for Interview (2010)

Fashion

“GAVRAS: So let’s talk a little bit about being a fashion icon. Do you think, for example, that Saddam Hussein was a fashion icon?”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Sourced quotes, Interview with Romain Gavras for Interview (2010)

Fashion , Thinking

“She never had public favor; it was a bit like the Hillary Clinton thing. She did all the right things for her country, but she wasn't ultimately revered. So she had a conversation with her confidant-adviser. She asked him, when have they ever looked up to or idolized a woman? Only one, he told her, the Virgin Mary. So she said, Then I will become like the Virgin Mary, and she did. She created a facade for herself; she stopped having lovers; she became like a virgin. She became sexless, and painted her face in a white alabaster way, and turned herself into an icon that was untouchable and sexless, and then she had everybody's respect.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Interview : Aperture Magazine (Summer 1999), Aperture http://allaboutmadonna.com/madonna-library/madonna-interview-aperture-magazine-summer-1999,
About Queen of England, Elizabeth I.

Way , Confidence , Lovers , Painting

“I was on the football team because I wanted to experience the different iconic social classes of high school. So football for me was an attempt to socially integrate in an interesting way. And then I didn’t like it anymore and stopped doing it and focused more on drama and science and other forms of art and music.”

Reggie Watts (1972) singer, musician and comedian

Cited in: " Comedy Bang! Bang! sidekick extraordinaire Reggie Watts sits down to talk at SXSW 2013 http://www.ifc.com/fix/2013/03/sxsw-2013-reggie-watts-on-music-high-school-and-hair" ifc.com. Posted March 10th, 2013, 8:03 PM by Melissa Locker: Watts reply to the question "You were on the football team!"

School , Art , Music , Way

“With more mainstream filmmaking, the problem is who’s making the decisions. They’re not artists. The key creative decisions are being made by lawyers and accountants—that’s a very precarious situation. It’s precarious because it really does matter. Icons are being made and manufactured. People say it’s just a movie—but it’s not.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Detours Interview (1995) http://www.jennifer-beals.com/media/press/detours1.html/

People , Problem , Decision

“Ed Bradley was an African American journalist who was best known as a correspondent on CBS's 60 Minutes. In recent years, he became a broadcast icon on that Sunday evening television show.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

About

“The World Trade Center cross has become a Christian icon. It has been blessed by so-called holy men and presented as a reminder that their God, who couldn't be bothered to stop the terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name, cared only enough to bestow upon us some rubble that resembles a cross.”

David Silverman (1957) American animator and director

2011-08-04
Culture War Update - The Dividening of America - American Atheists vs. Ground Zero Cross
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Television
Comedy Central
Comedy Central
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-4-2011/culture-war-update---the-dividening-of-america---american-atheists-vs--the-ground-zero-cross

Men , God , People , World

“Frankenstein, he makes a friend, he wants a wife… That’s the one that I think cemented the creature as an icon, because all of the sudden you got to know the creature as a full-fledged person, and you felt sympathy for it, and not just, “Oh, it’s a monster.””

Michael Dougherty

TRICK 'R TREAT DIRECTOR MICHAEL DOUGHERTY ON THE FILM’S RISE TO CULT CLASSIC STATUS http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/17/trick-r-treat-director-michael-dougherty-on-the-films-rise-to-cult-classic-status?page=2 (October 17, 2013)

Thinking , Personality

“Bin Laden's real audience is the Middle East, his other Muslims. I think he thought that, by this act, he would win large numbers of converts to his cause … [to] bring Arab regimes down. He would perhaps even take power in this or that country, preferably Saudi Arabia. That is where he is looking to; that is who is the audience. That is who his symbols are directed towards. So this is unlike anything else in the history of Islam. Early Muslims, when they left the Arabian Peninsula and entered the [Fertile Crescent], were conquerors. They converted peoples, and they gave them time to convert. So they didn't force them sometimes, and they were perfectly happy ruling over them. They were setting up a state, and then people converted over time. Syria remained Christian for hundreds of years after the Muslim conquest. So something different is going on here. The obvious sense in which the United States is evil is in the cultural icons that are seen everywhere. They are seemingly trivial things, the influence of the America culture, which is everywhere: TV, how women dress, the lack of importance of religion. So these are the senses in which they are rejecting the United States. But you're right; they don't see Americans as people. … They block that out. They only see as people the Muslims they want to convert to their side, and that's terrifying.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

Women , People , Religion , History

“I possess only a single bare, frame-less icon [his Squares ] of our times (like a pocket), and it is difficult to struggle. But my happiness in not being like you [ Aleksandr Benois ] will give me the strength to go further and further into the empty wilderness. For it is only there that transformation can take place. And I think you are mistaken when you say in reproaching me that my philosophy will destroy millions of lives. Are you not, all of you, like a roaring blaze that obstructs and prevents any forward movement?”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote in: 'Letter from K. Malevich to art-critic Aleksandr Benois', May 1916; by Jane A, Sharp, in Chapter 'The Critical Reception of the 0. 10 Exhibition: Malevich and Benua', in The great Utopia - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 44
1910 - 1920

Thinking , Time , Happiness

“It is my considered opinion that the so called Kashmir problem, we have been facing, since 1947 has never been viewed in a historical perspective. That is why it has defied solution so far, and its end is not in sight in the near future. Politicians at the helm of affairs during this nearly half a century have been living from hand to mouth and are waiting for Pakistan to face them with a fait accompli. Once againg they are out to hand over Kashmir and its people to be butchers who have devastated this fair land and destroyed its rich eulture. … It is therefore high time that we renounce this ritual and have a look at the problem in a historical perspective. I should like to warn that histories of Kashmir written by Kashmiri Hindus in modern times are worse than useless for this purpose. I have read almost all of them, only to be left wondering at the piteous state to which the Hindu mind in Kashmir has been reduced. I am not taking these histories into account except for bits and pieces which fall into the broad pattern. … What distinguishes the Hindu rulers of Kashmir from Hindu rulers elsewhere is that they continued to recruit in their army Turks from Central Asia without realizing that the Turks had become Islamicized and as such were no longer mere wage earners. One of Kashmir's Hindu rulers Harsha (1089-1101 CE) was persuaded by his Muslim favourites to plunder temple properties and melt down icons made of precious metal. Apologists of Islam have been highlighting this isolated incident in order to cover up the iconoclastic record of Islam not only in Kashmir but also in the rest of Bharatvarsha. At the same time they conceal the fact that Kashmir passed under the heel of Islam not as a result of the labours of its missionaries but due to a coup staged by an Islamicised army. … Small wonder that balance of farces in Kashmir should have continued to tilt in favour of Islamic imperialism till the last Hindu has been hounded out of his ancestral homeland. Small wonder that the hoodlums strut around not only in the valley but in the capital city of Delhi with airs of injured innocence. Small wonder that the Marxist-Muslim combine of scribes who dominate the media blame Jagmohan for arranging an overnight and enmasse exodus of the Hindus from the valley. (They cannot forgive Jagmohan for bringing back Kashmir to India at a time when the combine was hoping that Pakistan would face India with an accomplished fact.) Small wonder that what Arun Shourie has aptly described as the "Formula Factory"”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

the Nayars, the Puris, the Kotharis, the Dhars, the Haksars, the Tarkundes - should be busy devising ways for handing over the Kashmir Hindus to their age-old oppressors.
Kashmir: The Problem is Muslim Extremism by Sita Ram Goel https://web.archive.org/web/20080220033606/http://www.kashmir-information.com/Miscellaneous/Goel1.html

People , Age , Hope , Way

“But one problem remains. How can the conspiracy-minded Modern Democratic Party Women be assured that the switch was made? It is true that not many people would see the new bills and so some doubt might arise among the Democratic sisterhood about whether Wilson was really removed and then replaced on the bill by the three ladies named above. There is only one sure-fire means of relieving the Modern Democratic Party Women of their doubts before the whining starts. That means is to have the Democratic National Committee direct its current icon, Hilary Clinton, to publicly report on who appears on the $100,000 note each time she and her husband receive a packet of those bills from one or another of the foreign governments for which they are apparently selling out American interests. After all, if you cannot trust America’s graft-taker-in-chief, who can you trust?”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

Women , People , Problem , Appearance

“Teachers and pop icons, empty drums beat loudest noise. We swap their quotes and CDs like children trading toys. Follow along, bite the barbed hook deep in our jaw…”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"The War/La Ilaha Il Allah"
Out Seeing The Fields (2007)

Children , Quotes , Teachers

“With TV, came the icon, the inclusive image, the inclusive political posture or stance.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 191

“Our society has created a bunch of icons and role models who are distorting not just the future of this city [Bangalore] but of all India, and of our sense of values. Our people have lost respect for scholarship. Money and commerce has taken over. If IT is going to take away our basic values, then you can burn Bangalore and burn IT.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Quoted in CNR Rao, a high priest of pure science gets Bharat Ratna, 12 November 2012, 22 December 2013, IBN Live http://ibnlive.in.com/news/world-renowned-scientist-cnr-rao-gets-bharat-ratna/434510-3.html,

Money , People , Sense , Future

“Caine was no longer the icon of evil, the Enemy of God, the author of all the world's ills. He had become simply what he was: a ruthless, amoral man, now beaten--crushed by the world, just like any other.”

Matthew Stover book Blade of Tyshalle

Blade of Tyshalle (2001)

God , World , Evil

“It just seems like the most successful, iconic love stories are not so easy or escapist. I think the ones that stay with us and resonate are full of conflict, discord and misunderstandings 'cause that's what makes drama happen or tension even if it's a comedy. I think people who make movies and have invested a lot of money in them, get frightened that if they challenge an audience they are going to repel them. And I think the opposite, it's really true. It takes confidence and courage to know that and then commit to it.”

Claire Danes (1979) American actress

"Interview: Steve Martin and Claire Danes" by Jeff Otto at IGN.com (19 October 2005) http://movies.ign.com/articles/659/659752p1.html

Love , Money , People , Confidence

“Our primary concern is not to be style icons ourselves.”

Susannah Constantine (1962) British fashion designer and journalist

Scots Are So Stylish... (2007)

“Frankly I've never really subscribed to these adjectives tagging me as an 'icon', 'superstar', etc. I've always thought of myself as an actor doing his job to the best of his ability.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

“Anyone who isn’t strong is left in a corner, no one asks for their autograph, they are abandoned in the cold shadows. Those who win, however, become icons.”

Bode Miller (1977) American alpine ski racer

Interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, 16 Feb. 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11385083/

Strong

“Thoughtfully, just as Jabscreen owners everywhere were running out of apps to compare – and, by extension, anything to talk about – the nice droids at Apple Castle gifted them a whole new branch of conversation: the launch of the Jabscreen 4, which apparently is miles better than a regular Jabscreen, although no one can really explain why. Its most impressive feature is this: simply by existing, it suddenly makes your existing Olde Worlde vanilla Jabscreen seem rubbish. How can you enjoy sliding the little icons around on your Jabscreen 3 when you know that if you had a Jabscreen 4, those very same icons would be slightly sharper? The answer is you can't.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Guardian columns

World

“So, what's next? Will this debate subside or continue, as people look to other uses of Confederate icons and symbols? Is this simply about a flag that is as much a symbol of resistance to civil rights and equality as it was a symbol for soldiers whose performance on the battlefield might have secured the independence of a republic founded upon the cornerstone of white supremacy and inequality? One thing is clear: it has not been a good ten days for Confederate heritage advocates. Between licence plates, several SCV divisions rebuking other Confederate heritage groups for outrageous and childish behavior, and the fallout from Charleston, it may be that in 2015 people marked the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War by doing to Confederate heritage what Grant and Sherman did to the Confederacy itself in 1865.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

2010s, Down It Comes: No What? (June 2015)

War , People , Behavior

“Culture jamming is enjoying a resurgence, in part because of technological advancements but also more pertinently, because of the good old rules of supply and demand. Something not far from the surfaces of the public psyche is delighted to see the icons of corporate power subverted and mocked. There is, in short, a market for it. With commercialism able to overpower the traditional authority of religion, politics and schools, corporations have emerged a the natural targets for all sorts of free-floating rage and rebellion. The new ethos that culture jamming taps into is go-for-the-corporate-jugular.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Twelve, "Culture Jamming"

School , Religion , Nature , Rage

“Manhattan is not altogether felicitous for fiction. It is not a city of memory, not a family city, not the capital of America so much as the iconic capital of this century. It is grand and grandiose with its two rivers acting as a border to contain the restless. Its skyscrapers and bleak, rotting tenements are a gift for photographic consumption, but for the fictional imagination the city's inchoate density is a special challenge.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Locations: An Introduction" (p. xvi)
American Fictions (1999)

Family , Imagination , Memory

“When we had been in Ashenstovo [1873, located near the Prussian border]] a few days my mother took us children to see a famous Polish church, Kostjol, famous for its miraculous Madonna icon. This icon had three precious coats, one of gold, one of coral and one with pearls and diamonds... Many peasant men and women were were lying prostrate on the floor as if crucified, with their arms outstretched. It was very quiet. Suddenly a great blare of trumpets shattered the silence. Terribly frightened I saw the gold curtain open and the Madonna appear wearing a gold robe.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

from his 'Memories', in 'Catalogue Raisonné of the oil Paintings', ed. Maria Jawlensky, Angelica Jawlensky and Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky; published resp. in 1991, 1992, 1993
Source: 1936 - 1941, Life Memories' (1938), p.274

Women , Men , Children , Lying

“iPhone 7 — We will again watch people line up to buy an iconic product that is only marginally better than the paid-for product they already have. … We'll smile, nod our heads, and ask Siri to remind us to check to see if our medical plan covers mental health.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Looking Ahead to 2016 or Why I Now Want My Own Bunker http://itbusinessedge.com/blogs/unfiltered-opinion/looking-ahead-to-2016-or-why-i-now-want-my-own-bunker.html in IT Business Edge (31 December 2015)

People , Health , Smile

“The icon and the idol determine two manners of being for beings, not two classes of beings.”

Jean-Luc Marion (1946) French philosopher

Source: God Without Being (1982), p. 8

“I feel at home in Hindu temples. I like how complicated they are. Being in a great Hindu temple is like being in a forest. You can wander around all day. People kind of leave you alone. When you wander around temples when there isn't a ceremony, there's a kind of peacefulness about them, and I recognize the scenes and the icons. That's Shiva doing this, that's Parvati doing that. Whereas when I go to the Vatican, I have to have someone explain to me what the Sistine Chapel is all about. So I'm at home in Hinduism in that sense, I know what it's all about.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

About her intent to practice Hinduism
Q&A with Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor and author of The Hindus

People , Peace , Feeling , Home

“I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices — it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath — someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts … just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown …. [being given] free rein [by director Christopher Nolan was] fun, because there are no real boundaries to what The Joker would say or do. Nothing intimidates him, and everything is a big joke.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

Interview remarks published in Empire, from interviews conducted in November 2007.
[Dan Jolin, Fear Has a Face, http://www.empireonline.com/magazine/covers/image.asp?id=24227&gallery=1365&caption=%23223%20%28January%202008%29, Empire, 223, January, 2008, 87–88, Bauer Verlagsgruppe, 2008-07-08]
[Dan Jolin, The Dark Knight, http://www.empireonline.com/magazine/covers/image.asp?id=27819&gallery=1365&caption=%23229+%28July+2008%29, Empire, 229, July, 2008, 92–100, Bauer Verlagsgruppe, 2008-08-18]
[Olly Richards, World Exclusive: The Joker Speaks: He's a Cold-blooded Mass-murdering Clown, http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?nid=21560, Empire, Web, Bauer Verlagsgruppe, November 28, 2007, 2008-08-18]

“I don't consider myself pretty, I was never a pretty boy, I'm not going to be a pretty man and it's not something I truly aspire too. When I think of iconic men I think of that Forties era, of a guy in a good suit and a hat. That's when men were men.”

Joshua Jackson (1978) Canadian actor

As quoted in the article 'Canada dry' in the London Evening Standard (March 11th, 2005)

Men , Guy , Boy , Thinking

“I would say, 'My things have the look of icons.' Unconsciously they look at you not as my face is now – you see me in profile – icons are only this way. And so are my paintings.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Way , Painting

“Physically, we transmit signals or signs -- audible, visual, tactual. But the mere transmission and reception of a physical signal does not constitute communication. A sign, if it is perceived by the recipient, has the potential for selecting responses in him. Physically, when we communicate, we make noises with our mouths, or gesticulate, or exhibit some token or icon, and these physical signals set up a response behavior.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: On Human Communication (1957), What Is It That We Communicate?, p. 10

Behavior , Communication

“I understand that people refer to me as an icon and that sort of thing because there are certain guys who play a certain role. And horror fans are very passionate people. They love their genre. And they love the Saw films. So the fact that I played a central role in those films, that puts you in a position where people… You know, the screen is sixty feet across, and people sometimes forget that you’re an actor and you play… Because you become established as a certain kind of character. But in fact, we continue to try and occupy the skins of different human beings. That’s what you get involved in being an actor for in the first place.”

Tobin Bell (1942) American actor

Interview: Tobin Bell Discusses His Career and His New Horror Film Dark House https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/interview-tobin-bell-discusses-his-career-and-his-new-horror-film-dark-house/ (March 14, 2014)

Love , People , Guy , Understanding

“Many iconic features of Twitter have been created over the years by listening and watching what people who use Twitter do with it and then working to make it easier and better for them—we still do this today.”

Biz Stone (1974) American blogger; co-founder of Twitter

Twitter Blog: "The hashtag at 10 years young" https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/product/2017/the-hashtag-at-ten-years-young.html (23 August 2017)

People

“The first icon of the 21st Century is the closed-circuit surveillance camera, slowly panning back and forth as we move beneath its gaze.”

John Twelve Hawks American writer

How We Live Now (2005)

“But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time”

Alex Kozinski (1950) American judge

Discussing the right of publicity issue raised in the case White v. Samsung Elec. Am., Inc., 989 F.2d 1512 (9th Cir. 1993). http://notabug.com/kozinski/whitedissent.
Context: For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time.

Idea , Time , Drawing , Dependency

“I call a sign which stands for something merely because it resembles it, an icon. Icons are so completely substituted for their objects as hardly to be distinguished from them.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

On The Algebra of Logic (1885)
Context: I call a sign which stands for something merely because it resembles it, an icon. Icons are so completely substituted for their objects as hardly to be distinguished from them. Such are the diagrams of geometry. A diagram, indeed, so far as it has a general signification, is not a pure icon; but in the middle part of our reasonings we forget that abstractness in great measure, and the diagram is for us the very thing. So in contemplating a painting, there is a moment when we lose the consciousness that it is not the thing, the distinction of the real and the copy disappears, and it is for the moment a pure dream, — not any particular existence, and yet not general. At that moment we are contemplating an icon.

“So, all of us think there are a thousand things we could have done, a thousand things we could have done, and we have to do, because Aaron Swartz is now an icon, an ideal. He is what we will be fighting for, all of us, for the rest of our lives. … Every time you saw Aaron, he was surrounded by five or 10 different people who loved and respected and worked with him. He was depressed because he was increasingly recognizing that the idealism he brought to this fight maybe wasn’t enough.”

Lawrence Lessig (1961) American academic, political activist.

Statement after the suicide of Aaron Swartz, in "An Incredible Soul": Larry Lessig Remembers Aaron Swartz After Cyberactivist’s Suicide Before Trial; Parents Blame Prosecutor" at Democracy NOW! (14 January 2013) http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/14/an_incredible_soul_lawrence_lessig_remembers
Context: I received an email from JSTOR four days before Aaron died, from the president of JSTOR, announcing, celebrating that JSTOR was going to release all of these journal articles to anybody around the world who wanted access — exactly what Aaron was fighting for. And I didn’t have time to send it to Aaron; I was on — I was traveling. But I looked forward to seeing him again — I had just seen him the week before — and celebrating that this is what had happened. So, all of us think there are a thousand things we could have done, a thousand things we could have done, and we have to do, because Aaron Swartz is now an icon, an ideal. He is what we will be fighting for, all of us, for the rest of our lives. … Every time you saw Aaron, he was surrounded by five or 10 different people who loved and respected and worked with him. He was depressed because he was increasingly recognizing that the idealism he brought to this fight maybe wasn’t enough. When he saw all of his wealth gone, and he recognized his parents were going to have to mortgage their house so he could afford a lawyer to fight a government that treated him as if he were a 9/11 terrorist, as if what he was doing was threatening the infrastructure of the United States, when he saw that and he recognized how — how incredibly difficult that fight was going to be, of course he was depressed.
Now, you know, I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know whether there was something wrong with him because of — you know, beyond the rational reason he had to be depressed, but I don’t — I don’t — I don’t have patience for people who want to say, "Oh, this was just a crazy person; this was just a person with a psychological problem who killed himself." No. This was somebody — this was somebody who was pushed to the edge by what I think of as a kind of bullying by our government. A bullying by our government.

Love , People , Thinking , Time

“For me, Madonna has been not only a queer icon but also a Christ icon”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

О Мадонне

Christ

“Wherever you go, there are three icons that everyone knows: Jesus Christ, Pele and Coca-Cola.”

Pelé (1940–2022) Brazilian association football player

Christ

“Recently, socialist presidents that came before me embezzled hundreds of billions of dollars, corrupting part of our media and our Parliament, all for a project to attain absolute power. They were judged and punished thanks to the patriotism, perseverance and bravery of a judge who is an icon in my country: Dr. Sérgio Moro, our current Minister ofJustice and Public Security. These presidents also transferred a considerable amount of resources to other countries, aiming at promoting and implementing similar projects throughout our region. This funding source has dried up. The same authorities came here every year and made uncommitted statements about issues that never addressed the real interests of Brazil nor contributed to world stability. Despite that, they were praised.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Speech at the at the 74th UN General Assembly. Statement by Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil http://statements.unmeetings.org/GA74/BR_EN.pdf. United Nations PaperSmart (24 September 2019).

World , Parting , Perseverance , Country