Totems Quotes

• You must be absolutely honest and true in the depicting of a totem for meaning is attached to every line. You must be most particular about detail and proportion.

  Emily Carr

  Details, Lines, Honest

  Emily Carr (2009). “Opposite Contraries: The Unknown Journals of Emily Carr and Other Writings”, p.195, D & M Publishers

  64 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Intelligent, Break, Taboo

  Pierre Elliott Trudeau (2010). “Approaches to Politics”, Oxford University Press, USA

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• Animal totems, like the tiger, come from the Other Side to protect us while we are away from Home.

  Sylvia Browne

  Home, Animal, Sides

  65 Copy quote

• Some people pray to a totem pole, some people pray to a sun, some people pray to a god. It all works for them. It all comes back to what you think.

  Barry Zito

  Sports, Thinking, People

  55 Copy quote

• Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

  Mason Cooley

  New York, Paris, Drawing

  59 Copy quote

• You can't really get into regular football after you watch Australian rules football because it's just two different ends of the totem pole.

  Andrew Bogut

  Football, Two, Different

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have a need to be religious, we need to worship, we need to build totems and shrines and icons, but nobody's sure in honor of what.

  Robyn Hitchcock

  Religious, Icons, Honor

  53 Copy quote

• It's the company itself, but most of these mutual fund companies, the guy who runs the company is just a fact totem and the guy who runs the money is the power. But we really don't know who they are.

  Jim Cramer

  Running, Guy, Facts

  55 Copy quote

• Video artists being at the low end of the totem pole economically, one of the ways we survive is to go around showing work and giving these talks.

  Bill Viola

  Artist, Giving, Way

  55 Copy quote

• In the States, tennis is sixth or seventh on the totem pole as far as sports go.

  Andy Roddick

  Sports, Tennis, States

  "Cool, dude". Interview with Jamie Jackson, www.theguardian.com. June 19, 2004.

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• With studio work, I'm always the bottom man on the totem pole.

  David Lindsay-Abaire

  Men, Bottom, Studios

  53 Copy quote

• What is a totem? It is as a rule an animal (whether edible and harmless or dangerous and feared) and more rarely a plant or a natural phenomenon (such as rain or water), which stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan. In the first place, the totem is the common ancestor of the clan; at the same time it is their guardian spirit and helper, which sends them oracles and, if dangerous to others, recognizes and spares its own children.

  Sigmund Freud

  Children, Rain, Animal

  Sigmund Freud (2003). “Totem and Taboo”, p.3, Routledge

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• And it rained a fever. And it rained a silence. And it rained a sacrifice. And it rained a miracle. And it rained sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem.

  Tom Robbins

  Eye, Sacrifice, Silence

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Another Roadside Attraction”, p.371, Bantam

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The true shaman, the true naturalist, works to reconnect conscious human life with Nature and Spirit through totems and ritual.

  Ted Andrews

  Spirit, Conscious, Human Life

  Ted Andrews (2010). “Animal Speak: The Spiritual & Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small”, p.13, Llewellyn Worldwide

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Being asked what animal you'd like to be is a trick question; you're already an animal.

  Douglas Coupland

  Animal, Tricks

  10 Copy quote

• I would tell your generation, wherever you are on the totem poll - whether you're halfway there or at the bottom, don't despise small beginnings; small beginnings get you ready for great things.

  T. D. Jakes

  Halfway There, Generations, Despise

  "T.D. Jakes Talks: Second Chances, Humble Beginnings & Knowing Your Worth". Interview with Zon D'Amour, lasentinel.net. September 21, 2016.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• Look at it this way - a totem pole is just a decorated tree. My work is a confessional.

  Louise Bourgeois

  Tree, Looks, Way

  10 Copy quote

• Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Animal, Instinct, Mankind

  D. H. Lawrence (2016). “D. H. Lawrence: The Complete Novels (Centaur Classics)”, p.107, D. H. Lawrence

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Dance is low on the totem pole of the arts, because you're not left with a painting... a book that will stay there, a score you can read.

  Jerome Robbins

  Art, Book, Dancing

  35 Copy quote

• Sometimes. I get recognized, but I'm not really a famous famous. I'm pretty low on the showbiz totem pole - I mean, I'm no Jon or Kate plus eight. I'm just a comic, not a baby factory.

  Dave Attell

  Baby, Mean, Eight

  Interview with Chris O'Connell, www.avclub.com. August 17, 2009.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.

  James A. Baldwin

  Passion, Army, Sacrifice

  "Letter from a Region of My Mind". The New Yorker, November 17, 1962. Republished in "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin as "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind", 1963.

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make. A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound, But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound, Totems of love and hate, black sorcery-stones.

  Stephen Vincent Benet

  Hate, Real, War

  STEPHEN VINCENT BENET (1928). “JOHN BROWN'S BODY”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The end of the animal trade would leave more time to trap or beat to death pop star wannabes.

  Simon Cowell

  Stars, Animal, Beats

  58 Copy quote

• Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another. We erect edifices in our minds about the flimsy framework of word and deed, mere totems of the true person, who, like the gods to whom the temples were built, remains hidden. We understand our own construct; we know our own theory; we love our own fabrication. Still . . . does the artifice of our affection make our love any less real?

  Rick Yancey

  Real, Mind, Temples

  Rick Yancey (2010). “The Monstrumologist: The Terror Beneath”, p.300, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A rattlesnake loose in the living room tends to end all discussion of animal rights.

  Lance Morrow

  Animal, Rights, Rooms

  25 Copy quote