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“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, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

“I am powerful because of who and what I am. Not because of who I am not.”
― Margaret Stohl, Icons

“The figure in the icon is not meant to represent literally what Peter or John or any of the apostles looked like, or what Mary looked like, nor the child, Jesus. But, the orthodox painter feels, Jesus of Nazareth did not walk around Galilee faceless. The icon of Jesus may not look like the man Jesus two thousand years ago, but it represents some *quality* of Jesus, or his mother, or his followers, and so becomes an open window through which we can be given a new glimpse of the love of God. ”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“The witch is the ultimate feminist icon because she is a fully rounded symbol of female oppression and liberation.”
― Pam Grossman, Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power

“If you must walk in someone's shadow make sure it's your own”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru

“My only career goal is to be an halloween icon.”
― Nuno Roque

“Doing the difficult things again and again have built the giants, the legends, the icons and the superstars.”
― Hiral Nagda

“You couldn’t see the soldiers as people. They were icons.”
― Sara Sheridan, Truth Or Dare

“Художник, по невежествыу воображающий, будто без канонической формы он сотворит великое, подобен пешеходу, которому мешает, по его мнению, твердая почва и который мнит, что вися в воздухе, он ушел бы дальше, чем по земле. На самом же деле такой художник, отбросив форму совершенную, бессознательно хватается за обрывки и обломки тоже форм, но случайных и несовершенных, и к этим-то бессознательным реминисценциям притягивает эпитет «творчества».”
― Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis

“Между тем, истинный художник хочет не своего во что бы то ни стало, а прекрасного, объективно-прекрасного, то есть художественно воплощенной истины вещей, и вовсе не занят мелочным смаолюбивым вопросом, первым ли или сотым говорит он об истине. Лишь бы это была истина, - и тогда ценность происведения сама собою установится. Как всякий, кто живет, занят мыслью, живет ли он по правде или нет, а не тем, оказывается ли его жизнь похожей на жизнь соседа, - живет сам в себе для истины и убежден, что искренняя жизнь для истины непременно индивидуальна и в самой сути своей никак не повторима, истинной же может быть лишь в потоке всечеловеческой истории, а не как нарочито-выдумываемая - так не иначе и жизнь художественная: и художник, опираясь на всечеловеческие художественные каноны, когда таковые здесь или там найдены, чрез них и в них находит силу воплощать подлинно созерцаемую действительность и твердо знает, что дело его, если оно свободнои, не окажется удвоением чужого дела, хотя предмет беспокойства его - не это совподение с кем-то, а истинность изображенного им.”
― Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis

“One might well conceive all of human history as the story of humankind's journey from beauty lost to beauty gradually sought and regained. Never, over the centuries, has the human need for beauty been extinguished...Art, somehow removed from the practical demands of everyday life, reveals that our kinship is not with the biological world only; it is also with the spiritual world.”
― Irina Yazykova, Hidden and Triumphant: The Underground Struggle to Save Russian Iconography

“Culture creates awareness around issues, it entertains and saddens, it can encourage commitment to a social contract or strengthen personal hygiene in public. Culture is that powerful. Culture creates the icons we follow, that we see ourselves in, that we orient ourselves toward. It's culture that tells us to love or hate, accept or tolerate, embrace or reject.”
― Negin Farsad, How to Make White People Laugh

“The Xanax idols
Pipe and needles icons,
The generation of hysteria,
(Lazy youth looking...for prosperity)
human rights lost in austerity.”
― G. P. Moci, Isabella

“Digest the media you create. If you write books, read. If you make music, put on your music playlist. If you’re into business keep up with your favorite entrepreneurs. Inspiration can’t be achieved without others to guide the way.”
― Lidia Longorio

“From college professors and authors and judges and ministers! Everybody! Dirt farmers and international names!...I don't know what she does to them all - but she does something. She's not a movie star to them - she's a goddess.”
― Ayn Rand

“What an opportunity the senior Bachchan lost to make a difference to the prejudiced heads by making a statement against the mangalik nonsense. Oh how small really the Big B is, and how big the media made Diana the small. It’s incredible how her quest for lust was portrayed as her search for love! No faulting her taking a lover on the rebound as her man thrust a rival into her marital life but for the media to picture her bed hopping as her craving for love is galling indeed. Why in picturing Diana as the icon of love the media made lust a synonym of love and what’s worse, it made a villain out of her man who embodies the best of love that is constancy.”
― B.S. Murthy, Glaring Shadow - A Stream of Consciousness Novel

“Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night�� little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end. Ten minutes—ten seconds—of the real H. would correct all this. And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again. The rough, sharp, cleansing tang of her otherness is gone.

What pitiable cant to say, ‘She will live forever in my memory!�� ‘Live?�� That is exactly what she won’t do. You might as well think like the old Egyptians that you can keep the dead by embalming them. Will nothing persuade us that they are gone? What’s left? A corpse, a memory, and (in some versions) a ghost. All mockeries or horrors. Three more ways of spelling the word ‘dead.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“The icon is like a pair of spectacles which you put on to see heaven . . . Orthodox Christianity believes very strongly that you and I can meet the godhead, that we can almost become like gods. It's that extraordinary, frightening statement that Western Christianity is very shy of. - Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of History of the Church at Oxford University”
― Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects