Iconoclast Quotes & Sayings

There may be room in government service for the altruist and the iconoclast, but I have yet to see one who was not treated as an oddity at best and at worst an object of suspicion and fear. — James Lee Burke

God does not love sinners because they are attractive; sinners are attractive to God because he loves them. — Martin Luther

It is because the critics are not detached that they do not see this detachment; it is because they are not looking at things in a dry light that they cannot see the difference between black and white. It is because they are in a particular mood of reaction and revolt that they have a motive for making out that all the white is dirty grey and the black not so black as it is painted. I do not say there are not human excuses for their revolt; I do not say it is not in some ways sympathetic; what I say is that it is not in any way scientific. An iconoclast may be indignant; an iconoclast may be justly indignant; but an iconoclast is not impartial. And it is stark hypocrisy to pretend that nine-tenths of the higher critics and scientific evolutionists and professors of comparative religion are in the least impartial. Why should they be impartial, what is being impartial, when the whole world is at war about whether one thing is a devouring superstition or a divine hope? — G.K. Chesterton

Be the slaughterhouse for sacred cows. — Cassandra Duffy

The myth persists in Egypt to this day that Napoleon's soldiers actually disfigured some of these ruins, and are even said to have used the Sphinx as target practice for their cannons, shooting off its nose. This last is a calumny: it is known that the Sphinx was defaced as early as the eighth century by the Sufi iconoclast Saim-ed-Dahr,28 and was further damaged in 1380 by fanatical Muslims prompted by the Koran's strictures against images. During these early times the Sphinx was not regarded as a precious historical object, but instead inspired fear: through the centuries it became known to the Egyptians as Abul-Hol (Father of Terrors), and would only begin to be regarded more favorably when it became a tourist attraction in the later nineteenth century. — Paul Strathern

MY FATHER was a brilliant man, a true iconoclast, fiercely self-reliant, a dark genius, cruel, selfish, and eternally optimistic. Early in his sales career, a boss called him an "independent son of a bitch," which Dad took as the highest compliment he'd ever received. He wanted me to be the same way. Dad had no hobbies, no distractive activities. He didn't do household chores, wash the car, — Chris Offutt

Poetry, like dreams, will eventually break through every person's consciousness, even the tightest iconoclast's. — Sheila Bender

Thers is this wonderful iconoclast at Rutgers, Doron Zeilberger, who says that our mathematics is the result of a random walk, by which he means what WE call mathematics. Likewise, I think, for the sciences. — Ian Hacking

Reality the iconoclast once more. Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem. — C.S. Lewis

Everyone of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self..We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves. (34) Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular.(7) Our reality, our true self, is hidden in what appears to us to be nothingness ... We can rise above this unreality and recover our hidden reality ... (281) God Himself begins to live in me not only as my Creator but as my other and true self. (41) — Thomas Merton

Man at his best is a system-breaker, an iconoclast seeking not only variety, but destruction. — John Carroll

To negotiate is not to do as one likes. — Napoleon Bonaparte

This grossly advertised wonder [Venice], this gold idol with clay feet, this trompe-l'oeil, this painted deception, this cliche-what intelligent iconoclast could fail to experience a destructive impulse in her presence? — Mary McCarthy

I can't stand Liverpool. I can't stand the people. I can't stand anything to do with them. — Gary Neville

Everybody wants blockbusters. I like to see a few pictures now and then that have to do with people and have relationships, and that's what I want to do films about. I don't want to see these sci-fi movies, and I don't want to do one of those. I don't understand it. — James Garner

If you want to really know what your friends and family think of you die broke, and then see who shows up for the funeral. — Gregory Nunn

The smashing of idols is in itself such a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the iconoclast to look clearly into a future when there will not be many idols left to smash. — Walter Lippmann

You think that you are an iconoclast, but you're not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you ... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character. — Michael Ondaatje

The poet is a creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say in prose what can only be expressed in song. — Edmund Clarence Stedman

Images, I must suppose, have their use or they would not have been so popular. (It makes little difference whether they are pictures and statues outside the mind or imaginative constructions within it.) To me, however, their danger is more obvious. Images of the Holy easily become holy images - sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are 'offended' by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not. But the same thing happens in our private prayers. — C.S. Lewis

There's no question that the resolution of dissonance has always been the norm against which the occasional iconoclast has sought to make its mark — Herbert Lindenberger

We are culturally predisposed to sheltering criticism from criticism; we have enshrined the iconoclast — Marilynne Robinson

There's an old Cheyenne saying about how, when a man is as wise as a serpent, he can afford to be as harmless as a dove. — Larissa Ione

My teacher's mind and my interest in youth has brought me to some renewed conclusions, and I pass them on earnestly to mature persons who are given to assisting young people off the trail. The dictionary has a word for them: iconoclast. It is defined as, "one who attacks cherished beliefs as shames." What if the cherished beliefs that are attacked along the way are true? What if they are the very beliefs that make these boys and girls worthwhile, promising people they are? What if the foundations of their faith are effectively shaken at this crucial period, and they dangle, with no substantial footings to stand on? — Marion D. Hanks

The creative individual is no longer viewed as an iconoclast. He - or she - is the new mainstream. — Richard Florida

Images of the Holy easily become holy images
sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leads all previous idea of the Messiah in ruins. — C.S. Lewis

No iconoclast can possibly escape the severest criticism. — Clarence Darrow

To oppose, to refute, to deny is not to know the truth. Whatever good may come in the destroying of the false, the best hammer of the critic will not serve to carve the celestial form of the real; and when the iconoclast becomes the bigot of negation and declares the non-existence of any form worthy of worship because he has destroyed so many unworthy forms, he becomes a fool. That he has never conceived a deity worth worshipping is poor ground for saying such cannot exist. — George MacDonald

My idea of God is a not divine idea. It has to be shattered from time to time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?.. — C.S. Lewis

How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. advertises trucks by invoking "The Dodge Rebellion"? How is one to be bona fide iconoclast when Burger King sells onion rings with "Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules"? How can an Image-Fiction writer hope to make people more critical of televisual culture by parodying television as a self-serving commercial enterprise when Pepsi and Subaru and FedEx parodies of self-serving commercials are already doing big business? It's almost a history lesson: I'm starting to see just why turn-of-the-century Americans' biggest fear was of anarchist and anarchy. For if anarchy actually wins, if rulelessness become the rule, then protest and change become not just impossible but incoherent. It'd be like casting a ballot for Stalin: you are voting for an end to all voting. — David Foster Wallace

emotion. I was a monument to our theft. I was an iconoclast. — Mike Avitabile

But in order to be an iconoclast, an author must be more than merely aware of the idol he wishes to destroy. He must be intimate with it and understand it in all its aspects. This means that he must have devoted serious thought to it, and have beliefs of his own which will stand up in the place of the broken idol. In other words, any child can complain, but it takes an adult to clash with accepted beliefs ... an adult with ideas. — Alfred Bester

We have to be willing to give up all the injustices of the past that did exist - and that do exist right now. When we become interested in liberation, we then become interested in that which transcends time. — Andrew Cohen

I do know that kind fate allowed me to find a couple of nice ideas after many years of feverish labor. — Albert Einstein

If I ask my actors to bare themselves, to reveal themselves as almost naked, I have to bare myself, expose myself as well. That's what creates excitement. — Jacques Audiard