Pedestal Quotes - page 2
I had been a vegetarian ever since coming across the Theosophical teaching. My children had never tasted meat or chicken or fish and I suffered from the normal superiority complex which is often an outstanding characteristic of a vegetarian.... I have definitely come to the conclusion that it is better to eat beefsteak and have a kind tongue than to be a strict vegetarian and, from a pedestal of superiority, look down upon this world. Again, I would point out that generalisations are inexact. I have known many vegetarians who were lovely and sweet and kind and good.
Alice Bailey
The symbolic act of the death of the father is absolutely necessary, but it is also necessary to do it in an intelligent way, with lucidity and without resentment. If you perceive your father in a violent way, it is because you are not killing him: you are asking him to love you because you need it. But if you are able to see him positively, without his pedestal and without your fear, you are no longer begging him to love you in order for you to exist. And this is when you kill him, when you make him fall. But once you've knocked him down, it is necessary to rebuild him and repay him, because fathers have essential value, even if they are monsters: they give us life, they leave their imprint on certain parts of our being, and they allow us to become who we are in a conscious way.
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Woe to him who in passing should hurl an insult at this gentle and pensive head. He would be punished, as all vulgar souls are punished, by his very vulgarity, and by his incapacity to conceive what is divine. This man, from his granite pedestal, will point out to all men the way of blessedness which he found; and ages hence, the cultivated traveler, passing by this spot, will say in his heart, "The truest vision ever had of God came, perhaps, here."
Baruch Spinoza
No. I would have felt more awkward if I'd been a fan. I was around 15 when I realized he was inescapable. Even if I was in a car and had the radio on, there's my dad. He's larger than life and our culture is obsessed with dead musicians. We love to put them on a pedestal. If Kurt had just been another guy who abandoned his family in the most awful way possible... But he wasn't. He inspired people to put him on a pedestal, to become St. Kurt.
Frances Bean Cobain
It is true that I described antisocial, parsimonious, sanctimonious, and wasteful behavior by the owners over the years, but baseball's problem is structural, not individual. Put any individual into a position of power with an opportunity to make tens of millions of dollars in an industry that is on a cultural pedestal and protected from all forms of competition, and the odds are against the second coming of Lee Iacocca or Ralph Nader.
Andrew Zimbalist
A Roman emperor sitting at the table surrounded by his bodyguard is a magnificent sight, but when the reason is fear, the magnificence pales. So also when the individual does not dare stand taciturnly by his word, does not stand freely and confidently on the pedestal of a conscious act, but is surrounded by a host of deliberations before and after that render him incapable of getting his eye on the action.
Søren Kierkegaard
I realized I had, unbeknownst to me, signed an invisible contract which required me to enter into a strange new echelon of society. People suddenly wanted to take pictures of me on the street. Journalists were interested in the kind of socks I preferred. ... It was an atmosphere from which I instantly wanted to retreat. I detested the superficial elevation and commodification of it all, juxtaposed with the grotesque self-involvement it would sometimes draw out in me. Being a faceless member of a mob, I soon realized, is far more comforting than teetering on a brittle pedestal one inch off the ground. The exclusion and subtle differentiation that comes with even the rather diluted form of celebrity that I have embarrasses me.
Jack Gleeson
