statues

"Yet despite this calm attitude, the figure throbs with movement; we can already see it passing from the left leg to the right and back to the left, swinging, elastic; it seems to prevent the action of her arms. And so the contour lines, the planes of the surface from the tips of the feet to the head with a slightly tired and nervous expression, up to the curls of the hair, all appear moved, fluctuating, continually varying direction and relief. Movement in rest: this is how the impression produced by this figure could be summed up. (Emanuel Löwy)"

"The attitude of the apoxyómenos is posed, with the body supported by the left leg and with the right stretched slightly backwards; yet the whole figure is crossed by a nervous throb of movement, since one gets the very vivid impression that, even with the simple action of wiping oneself with the strigil, the athlete continually changes in the support of the right leg to that of the left and so on . And the impression of lively liveliness of the arms also arises. Everything in this nervous elasticity is fluctuating, moved, agitated; yet the figure is at rest! (Pericle Ducati)"

"Lysippus makes the head smaller, but at the same time gives the whole figure tall, slender proportions. And the move is devoid of refinement, everything is casual and easy, and the whole exudes a noble elegance: he is an athlete of noble birth, of refined education, of high conscience, of ready, lucid intellectuality. (Pericle Ducati)"

"For the invincible impetus and the conquering energy, for the thrill of life transfused in marble, for the happy contrast between the tumultuous fluttering of the mantle and the adherence of the tunic to the belly and thighs}}, this statue is the most beautiful expression of the movement, which ancient art has transmitted to us. The sculptor has not only translated muscular strength and triumphant elegance, but the intensity of the sea breeze, of that breeze that Sully-Prudhomme makes us hear in an equally winged verse: Un peu du grand zéphir qui souffle à Salamine.... (Salomon Reinach)"

"The wind, the fresh sea breeze, which excites, exalts and inebriates, whips the triumphant, proud figure of the goddess and, having the chiton modeled on the body, collects and shakes the edges while detaching, either inflating high, or knocking down to the ground, the himation. And a very effective means for achieving a grandiose effect is the swelling of the himation between the leg and the leg, which, greatly enriching the lower part of the figure and giving it a solid base, prepares the passage to the torso, to the chest, to the wings widely extended. Everything in this sculpture seems to make us sensitive to the capricious breeze of the sea, so that it almost seems to inhale the salty smell of the wide surface of the waters. (Pericle Ducati)"

"For nothing in the world would I want to see the Colosseum rebuilt, with all the walls and steps in perfect condition, or a Parthenon painted in bright colors, or a Victory of Samothrace with her head. (Matilde Asensi)"

"A roaring automobile, which seems to run on machine guns, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti)"

"Thomas Jefferson statue removed from City Hall after 187 years"

"Why statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson aren't "next," as President Trump suggested"

"Statue of Unity has put Kevadiya in the global map, making it the most touted destination of the future. The monument has attracted global media attention which has helped to spread the word internationally. Since the Statue of Unity has become a global iconic memorial, the monument’s popularity will attract a global audience to the destination. We are also ready with attractive packages for travellers that will offer a unique experience at our Tent City Narmada, which is luxurious and encircled with the natures beauty.”"

"Statue of Unity meets up almost all accessibility requirements. Features such as conveyor belt, lifts with Braille button, spacious corridors, directional signages, wheel-chair facilities and accessible drinking water and toilets in the Statue of Unity are novel features that need to be replicated universally."

"Statue of Unity is an answer to all those who question the existence of India. The height of the statue is to remind the youth that the future of the country will be as huge as this. It is also symbolic of our engineering and technology affordability.”"

"What a lot of people don’t know is that New York City, for an extended period of time, was the second-largest slave port in the country, after Charleston, South Carolina; that in 1859, on the blink of the Civil War, when South Carolina was about to secede from the Union after the election of Abraham Lincoln, that New York City’s mayor, Fernando Woods, proposed that New York City should also secede from the Union alongside the Southern states, because New York’s financial and political infrastructure were so deeply entangled and tied to the slavocracy of the South; also that the Statue of Liberty was originally conceived by Édouard de Laboulaye, a French abolitionist, who conceived of the idea of the Statue of Liberty and giving it to the United States as a gift, that it was originally conceived as an idea to celebrate the end of the Civil War and to celebrate abolition. The original conception of the statue actually had Lady Liberty breaking shackles, like a pair of broken shackles on her wrists, to symbolize the end of slavery. And over time, it became very clear that that would not have the sort of wide stream — or, wide mainstream support of people across the country, obviously this having been just not too long after the end of the Civil War, so there were still a lot of fresh wounds. And so they shifted the meaning of the statue to be more about sort of inclusivity, more about the American experience, the American project, the American promise, the promise of democracy, and sort of obfuscated the original meaning, to the point where even the design changed. And so they replaced the shackles with a tablet and the torch, and then put the shackles very subtly sort of underneath her robe. And you can — but the only way you can see them, these broken chains, these broken links, are from a helicopter or from an airplane. And in many ways, I think that that is a microcosm for how we hide the story of slavery across this country, that these chain links are hidden, out of sight, out of view of most people, under the robe of Lady Liberty, and how the story of slavery across this country is very — as we see now, very intentionally trying to be hidden and kept from so many people, so that we have a fundamentally inconsistent understanding of the way that slavery shaped our contemporary society today."

"The massive figure of a bronze woman is covered from head to foot with green oxide. The cold face looks blindly through the fog into the ocean wasteland, as though the bronze were waiting for the sun to come and bring its dead eyes to life."

"The view... from my apartment... was the World Trade Center... And now it's gone. And they attacked it. This symbol of... of American ingenuity and strength... and labor and imagination and commerce and it's gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is the Statue of Liberty. You can’t beat that."

"The Statue of Liberty means everything. We take it for granted today. We take it for granted. Remember the Statue of Liberty stands for what America is. We as Democrats have to remind ourselves and remind the country the great principles we stand for. This is a place of protection. This is not a country of bullies. We are not an empire. We are the light. We are the Statue of Liberty."

"Bartholdi produced a series of drawings in which the proposed statue began as a gigantic female fellah, or Arab peasant, and gradually evolved into a colossal goddess that resembled the ones he had contemplated in the early and mid 1860's."

"We aren't here today to bow before the representation of a fierce warlike god, filled with wrath and vengeance, but we joyously contemplate instead our own deity keeping watch and ward before the open gates of America and greater than all that have been celebrated in ancient song. Instead of grasping in her hand thunderbolts of terror and of death, she holds aloft the light which illumines the way to man's enfranchisement. We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home, nor shall her chosen altar be neglected. Willing votaries will constantly keep alive its fires and these shall gleam upon the shores of our sister Republic thence, and joined with answering rays a stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man's oppression, until Liberty enlightens the world."

"Since September 11, 2001, I have often thought that perhaps it was fortunate for the world that the attackers targeted the World Trade Center instead of the Statue of Liberty, for if they had destroyed our sacred symbol of democracy I fear we as Americans would have been unable to keep ourselves from indulging in paroxysms of revenge of a sort the world has never seen before. If that had happened, it would have befouled the meaning of the Statue of Liberty beyond any hope of subsequent redemption -- if there were any people left to care. I have learned from my students that this upsetting thought of mine is subject to several unfortunate misconstruals, so let me expand on it to ward them off. The killing of thousands of innocents in the World Trade Center was a heinous crime, much more evil than the destruction of the Statue of Liberty would have been. And, yes, the World Trade Center was a much more appropriate symbol of al Qaeda's wrath than the Statue of Liberty would have been, but for that very reason it didn't mean as much, as a symbol, to us. It was Mammon and Plutocrats and Globalization, not Lady Liberty."

"The statue is of Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty. She holds a plaque in her left hand inscribed with July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals, the date of the Declaration of Independence. Her feet are circled with a broken shackle and chain celebrating US abolition of slavery. France's original idea for the gift occurred at the end of the Civil War. But the idea of liberation of the formerly enslaved rang hollow to those under the boot of a restored Southern order of racist repression. As the editor of the Black-owned newspaper the Cleveland Gazette, put it: “‘Liberty enlightening the world,’ indeed! The expression makes us sick. This government is a howling farce. It cannot or rather does not protect its citizens within its own borders. Shove the Bartholdi statue, torch and all, into the ocean until the "liberty" of this country is such as to make it possible for an inoffensive and industrious colored man to earn a respectable living for himself and family, without being ku-kluxed, perhaps murdered, his daughter and wife outraged, and his property destroyed. The idea of the "liberty" of this country "enlightening the world," or even Patagonia, is ridiculous in the extreme." And it is certain that "liberty" was laughable to the captive Geronimo and his people, who at the time were being shipped in chains to a dungeon prison at Fort Marion, Florida, or to those Indigenous nations that had been incarcerated in reservations carved out of their former homelands, learning that Congress was set to divide the reservation lands into marketable allotments, which would end up privatizing three-fourths of the already shrunken Native land base. Or for that matter, those teeming masses of Lazarus's poem, huddled in the overcrowded slums of the Lower East Side in New York City, who were doubtfully even aware of the festivities celebrating liberty…The Statue of Liberty was a marker on the path to the twentieth-century myth of the American Dream."

"Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhattan Bay, The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean away: Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy hand To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land."

"Let us never forget that the deep things that are American are the soul and the spirit. The Statue of Liberty is not tired, and not because it is made of bronze. It is because no matter what happens, here the individual is dignified because he is created in the image of his god. Let us not forget it."

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!""

"Taking the form of a veiled peasant woman the statue was to stand 86 feet high, and its pedestal was to rise to a height of 48 feet."

"You know that our Statue of Liberty was a gift from France, and its sculptor, Auguste Bartholdi, was a son of France. I don't know if you've ever studied the face of the statue, but immigrants entering New York Harbor used to strain to see it, as if it would tell them something about their new world. It's a strong, kind face. It is the face of Bartholdi's mother, a woman of Alsace. And so, among the many things we Americans thank you for, we thank you for her. The Statue of Liberty—made in Europe, erected in America—helps remind us not only of past ties but present realities. It is to those realities we must look in order to dispel whatever doubts may exist about the course of history and the place of free men and women within it. We live in a complex, dangerous, divided world; yet a world which can provide all of the good things we require—spiritual and material—if we but have the confidence and courage to face history's challenge."

"You have set up in New York Harbor a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete that monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of hell: "All hope abandon ye who enter here"."

"The Statue of Liberty is an extension of a tradition that seems to embody the contradictions in America's promise, and a reminder that its promises have not always been extended to us. As the narrator in James Baldwin's 1960 short story "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon" puts it, "I would never know what this statue meant to others, she had always been an ugly joke for me.""