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A signal is comprehended if it serves to make us notice the object or situation it bespeaks. A symbol is understood when we conceive the idea it presents.

Susanne Katherina Langer

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Susanne Katherina Langer
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More quotes by Susanne Katherina Langer

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Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problem than by its solution of them.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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Feeling, in the broad sense of whatever is felt in any way, as sensory stimulus or inward tension, pain, emotion or intent, is the mark of mentality.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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Is it conceivable that mysticism is a mark of inadequate art?
Susanne Katherina Langer
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To trace the development of mind from earliest times ... requires ... not a categorical concept, but a functional one.... The most promising operational principle for this purpose is the principle of individuation.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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The fairytale is irresponsible it is frankly imaginary, and its purpose is to gratify wishes, as a dream doth flatter.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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The power of magic has no known limits. A person knows, in a fair way, his own physical capacities, the weight of the blows he can deal, the furthest range of his arrows, the strength of his voice, the speed and endurance of his running but the reaches of his mind are indefinite and, to his feeling, infinite.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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As comedy presents the vital rhythm of self-preservation, tragedy exhibits that of self-consummation.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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Fire is a natural symbol of life and passion, though it is the one element in which nothing can actually live.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the higher criticism, the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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Nature, as man has always known it, he knows no more. Since he has learned to esteem signs above symbols, to suppress his emotional reactions in favor of practical ones and make use of nature instead of holding so much of it sacred, he has altered the face, if not the heart, of reality.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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It is significant that people who refuse to tell their children fairytales do not fear that the children will believe in princes and princesses, but that they will believe in witches and bogeys.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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The continual pursuit of meanings-wider, clearer, more negotiable, more articulate meanings- is philosophy.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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We have no physical model of this endless rhythm of individuation and involvement, we do have its image in the world of art, most purely in dance.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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Cinema is like dream.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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Music is our myth of the inner life.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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Common-sense knowledge is prompt, categorical, and inexact.
Susanne Katherina Langer