Totems Quotations

In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.

We're always on the side of the animal that's being chased. We always seem to be on the side of the rabbit or the fox and not on the side of the hounds.

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.

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.

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.

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

For a solitary animal egoism is a virtue that tends to preserve and improve the species: in any kind of community it becomes a destructive vice.

But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of animal life.

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

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

Every seed is awakened, and all animal life.

Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it.

My jobs on campaigns were pretty low on the totem pole - I was an advance man.

Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.

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

Astaire was not a sexual animal, but he made his partners look so extraordinarily related to him.

I looked at game show hosting as the bottom of the totem pole, one step away from infomercials. I never watched them myself. However, it's been a lot of fun.

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

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

This sense of the safe-deposit box as a totem of responsible security inspired me to rent a box myself shortly after the birth of our first child….

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.

Now defined as art, the totem has lost cult, taboo, and custom.

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

Yahweh is presented in the Jewish Bible as stateless and nationless. He can’t be used as a totem or fetish in that way.

Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another.

In almost every place where we find totems we also find a law against persons of the same totem having sexual relations with one another and consequently against their marrying. This, then, is 'exogamy', an institution related to totemism.