True Names in Popular Culture

True Names In Popular Culture

A true name is a name of a thing or being that expresses, or is somehow identical with, its true nature. The notion that language, or some specific sacred language, refers to things by their true names has been central to philosophical and grammatical study as well as various traditions of magic, religious invocation and mysticism (mantras) since antiquity.

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Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, true, names, popular and/or culture:

    “Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    “At the time there was a claustral monk named Frere Jean of the Hashes, who was young, gallant, joyful, good natured, dextrous, bold, adventurous, thoughtful, tall, thin, with a capacious mouth, gifted in the nose, a great dispatcher of hours, quite an accomplisher of masses, a quick doer-in of vigils,—to put it in a nutshell, a true monk if ever there’s been one since this monk of a world first monked out a monk; moreover, a cleric to his very teeth in matters of the breviary.”
    —François Rabelais (1494–1553)

    “In a time of confusion and rapid change like the present, when terms are continually turning inside out and the names of things hardly keep their meaning from day to day, it’s not possible to write two honest paragraphs without stopping to take crossbearings on every one of the abstractions that were so well ranged in ornate marble niches in the minds of our fathers.”
    —John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    “One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.”
    —Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

    “To assault the total culture totally is to be free to use all the fruits of mankind’s wisdom and experience without the rotten structure in which these glories are encased and encrusted.”
    —Judith Malina (b. 1926)