Quotes and Sayings about Myth
"I loved all the world's mythologies."
- Lloyd Alexander
(Related: World)
"To try to write a grand cosmical drama leads necessarily to myth. To try to let knowledge substitute ignorance in increasingly larger regions of space and time is science."
- Hannes Alfven
(Related: Science, Time, Knowledge, Drama, Ignorance, Myth, Space)
"There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago."
- Hannes Alfven
(Related: Time, Doubt, Infinite, Myth, Reason, Universe, Years)
"Santa is our culture's only mythic figure truly believed in by a large percentage of the population. It's a fact that most of the true believers are under eight years old, and that's a pity."
- Chris Van Allsburg
(Related: Culture, Fact, Old, Pity, Population, Years)
"Nobody in America, in the modern generation, has read their mythology or legends."
- Kenneth Anger
(Related: America, Legends, Mythology)
"A myth is the name of a terrible lie told by a smelly little brown person to a man in a white suit with a pair of binoculars."
- David Antin
(Related: Lie, Man, Myth, Name)
"Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder."
- Thomas Aquinas
(Related: Being, Myths, Philosophy, Poets, Wonder)
"In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them."
- Brooks Atkinson
(Related: Age, Time, Thought, People, Myth, Old)
"Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time."
- Margaret Atwood
(Related: Time, Meaning, Myths)
"It took some time to gather the research and develop it into the storyline, and to finally finish an origin myth poem that I had been working on for twenty years."
- Jean M. Auel
(Related: Time, Myth, Research, Years)
"I heard that Jesus had a pet dinosaur. Evolution must be a myth then."
- John Bacon
(Related: Pet, Evolution, Myth)
"No I don't think it was a myth at all, anymore than what the recession that the whole country was experiencing was a myth, which obviously seems like it's going to get worse and worse."
- Lester Bangs
(Related: Country, Myth)
"Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula."
- Roland Barthes
(Related: Knowledge, Formula, Mythology, World)
"Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion."
- Roland Barthes
(Related: Lie, Myth)
"Taste is more to do with manners than appearances. Taste is both myth and reality; it is not a style."
- Stephen Bayley
(Related: Manners, Myth, Reality, Style, Taste)
"The dogma of woman's complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind."
- Mary Ritter Beard
(Related: Men, Mind, Myths, Woman)
"The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born."
- Warren G. Bennis
(Related: Leadership, People, Fact, Myth, Nonsense)
"It struck me that what I'd heard about certain celebrities was true: they had It, whatever the hell It was. Star power isn't a myth; it is tangible and forceful."
- Michael Bergin
(Related: Power, Hell, Myth)
"I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene."
- Harold Bloom
(Related: Progress, Literary, Myths)
"Failure is simply the non-presence of success. But a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions."
- Orlando Bloom
(Related: Success, Failure, Disaster)
"There's a difference between a failure and a fiasco... a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions."
- Orlando Bloom
(Related: Failure, Difference, Disaster)
"Because of my Marxism, I was not into myths or miracles, whether it was the virgin birth, the physical resurrection or casting out demons from an epileptic."
- Lionel Blue
(Related: Marxism, Miracles, Myths)
"The Great Idea in advertising is far more than the sum of the recognition scores, the ratings and all the other superficial indicators of its success; it is in the realm of myth, to which measurements cannot apply."
- Leo Bogart
(Related: Success, Idea, Advertising, Myth)
"One of the most widespread myths about the deal is that the Administration is outsourcing the security of our ports to a company from the United Arab Emirates."
- Kit Bond
(Related: Company, Myths, Security, United)
"All the great legends are Templates for human behavior. I would define a myth as a story that has survived."
- John Boorman
(Related: Behavior, Legends, Myth)
"I look at the story, I look at the idea and just try to think of it in terms of that whole body of myth and see where the characters fit in and what they ought to be doing-all those archetypes are there to play with."
- John Boorman
(Related: Idea, Body, Myth, Play)
"Well, one of the first things is to restore the rule of law, to place the government back under the cage of law. Another thing is to stop falling for the myth of democracy."
- James Bovard
(Related: Government, Democracy, First, Law, Myth)
"I stress the uniqueness of the Australian landscape and its metaphysical and mythic content."
- Arthur Boyd
(Related: Content, Stress, Uniqueness)
"If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you."
- Ray Bradbury
(Related: Dreams, People, Myths, Want, Will)
"Congress acknowledged that society's accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment."
- William J. Brennan, Jr.
(Related: Society, Congress, Disability, Disease, Limitations, Myths)
"For Mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness."
- Thomas Bulfinch
(Related: Happiness, Virtue, Literature, Mythology)
"Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated."
- Thomas Bulfinch
(Related: Knowledge, Language, Literature, Mythology)
"Thus we hope to teach mythology not as a study, but as a relaxation from study; to give our work the charm of a story-book, yet by means of it to impart a knowledge of an important branch of education."
- Thomas Bulfinch
(Related: Education, Work, Knowledge, Hope, Charm, Mythology, Relaxation, Study)
"If no other knowledge deserves to be called useful but that which helps to enlarge our possessions or to raise our station in society, then Mythology has no claim to the appellation."
- Thomas Bulfinch
(Related: Society, Knowledge, Mythology, Possessions)
"I've always believed that the facts about dancing are more interesting than the myths, and this was a great chance for me to explore how the human body does such incredible things."
- Deborah Bull
(Related: Body, Chance, Dancing, Facts, Myths)
"It's another myth that dancing distorts or destroys your feet. If you have the right shaped foot to start and a good, strong technique, your feet should be fine."
- Deborah Bull
(Related: Dancing, Feet, Myth, Right)
"I subscribe to the myth that an artist's creativity comes from torment. Once that's fixed, what do you draw on?"
- David Byrne
(Related: Creativity, Artist, Myth)
"Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths."
- Joseph Campbell
(Related: Dreams, Myths, Public)
"The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm."
- Albert Camus
(Related: War, Clouds, Myth, Production)
"Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty."
- John Carmack
(Related: Science, Difficulty)
"You know, I didn't have enough money to quit my day job... the myth of the major label deal. Nowadays, you have a tour bus and a stylist and all this stuff. But back then, no way."
- Mary Chapin Carpenter
(Related: Money, Day, Job, Myth)
"Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place."
- Angela Carter
(Related: Life, Mother, Father, Gods, First, Myths, Satisfaction, Silly, Woman)
"In the mythic schema of all relations between men and women, man proposes, and woman is disposed of."
- Angela Carter
(Related: Men, Women, Man, Woman)
"I am trying to make art that relates to the deepest and most mythic concerns of human kind and I believe that, at this moment of history, feminism is humanism."
- Judy Chicago
(Related: Art, History, Feminism, Humanism, Trying)
"Could the one whom Christians worship be merely a mythological creation, or is he real? These questions have exercised many great minds and have been the dominant issue in New Testament studies during this century."
- John Clayton
(Related: Creation, New testament, Questions, Worship)
"Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort."
- Jean Cocteau
(Related: Alcohol, Comfort, Drugs, Lies, Man, Moments, Myth)
"The myth of black women profiting at the expense of black men is the oldest rap around."
- Johnnetta Betsch Cole
(Related: Men, Women, Myth, Rap)
"It reflects a prevailing myth that production technology is no more amenable to human judgment or social interests than the laws of thermodynamics, atomic structure or biological inheritance."
- Barry Commoner
(Related: Technology, Inheritance, Judgment, Laws, Myth, Production)
"Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth."
- Cyril Connolly
(Related: Imagination, Science, Artist, Myth, Today)
"Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of popular mythology since the Greeks."
- Alistair Cooke
(Related: Hollywood, Mythology, Popular)
"Other people's beliefs may be myths, but not mine."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: People, Beliefs, May, Myths)
"I think the '60s were an extraordinary time. I feel bad for the kids today who missed this wonderful confluence, which was simultaneously a confluence of the global and the mythological."
- Peter Coyote
(Related: Time, Kids, Today)
"But the myth of violent solutions as the ultimate solutions maintains itself in much of popular media."
- Stanley Crouch
(Related: Media, Myth, Popular)
"But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them."
- Christopher Dawson
(Related: Work, Folk, Heroes, Hollywood, Myths, Poets)
"The West Wing seems to be feeding the myth about how presidential politics are."
- William Devane
(Related: Politics, Myth)
"I am not a myth."
- Marlene Dietrich
(Related: Myth)
"History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth."
- E. L. Doctorow
(Related: History, People, End, Myth, Present)
"It's a big con job. We have sold the myth of Dublin as a sexy place incredibly well; because it is a dreary little dump most of the time."
- Roddy Doyle
(Related: Time, Job, Myth)
"For most of the history of our species we were helpless to understand how nature works. We took every storm, drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of nature."
- Ann Druyan
(Related: History, Nature, Illness, Myths, Spirits)
"Today's Communism can survive only if it abandons the myth of an infallible party, if it continues to think, and if it becomes democratic."
- Friedrich Durrenmatt
(Related: Communism, Myth, Party, Today)
"For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence."
- Friedrich Durrenmatt
(Related: People, Fiction, Man, Order, State)
"The logical man must either deny all miracles or none, and our American Indian myths and hero stories are perhaps, in themselves, quite as credible as those of the Hebrews of old."
- Charles Eastman
(Related: American, Man, Miracles, Myths, Old)
"In the United States there's a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner."
- Umberto Eco
(Related: Success, Successful, Countries, Mythology, states, United)
"The standardized American is largely a myth created not least by Americans themselves."
- Irwin Edman
(Related: American, Americans, Myth)
"It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved."
- Irwin Edman
(Related: Men, Logic, Myth, Reason, Symbol)
"As critical acclaim and response has built up, every interview I give is a chance to puncture the myth I've created about my work and refine it."
- James Ellroy
(Related: Work, Chance, Myth)
"The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief."
- Jacques Ellul
(Related: Belief, Goal, Opinion, Propaganda)
"I always looked for a man to rescue me and bring me happiness. I bought into that myth, of course, and looked for my own Prince Charming."
- Linda Evans
(Related: Happiness, Man, Myth)
"I believe that global warming is a myth. And so, therefore, I have no conscience problems at all and I'm going to buy a Suburban next time."
- Jerry Falwell
(Related: Time, Conscience, Global warming, Myth, Problems)
"I liked Latin, I like languages, I liked all the myths, and the Roman tales that we were required to translate in Latin, and all these interesting people who were never quite what they thought they would be or seemed to be."
- Suzanne Farrell
(Related: Thought, People, Myths)
"The Myth of Male Power dealt much more with the political issues, the legal issues, sexual harassment, date rape, women who kill, and those issues were very much more interfaced with the agendas of feminism."
- Warren Farrell
(Related: Legal, Power, Women, Feminism, Myth)
"The more real things get, the more like myths they become."
- Rainer W. Fassbinder
(Related: Myths)
"So certainly, if we can tell evil stories to make people sick, we can also tell good myths that make them well."
- Rainer W. Fassbinder
(Related: People, Evil, Myths)
"You have one big mythology in your favor: Everyone believes that you Europeans are impeccable. But I know you are jerks."
- Fernando Flores
(Related: Mythology)
"From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths and its direction toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth."
- Janet Frame
(Related: Darkness, Direction, Fact, First, Light, Memories, Myth)
"I guess darkness serves a purpose: to show us that there is redemption through chaos. I believe in that. I think that's the basis of Greek mythology."
- Brendan Fraser
(Related: Chaos, Darkness, Mythology)
"Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world."
- Erich Fromm
(Related: Dreams, Language, Myths, World)
"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death."
- Robert Fulghum
(Related: Death, Dreams, Imagination, Love, Experience, History, Knowledge, Hope, Cure, Facts, Grief, Laughter, Myth)
"There are not so many mythical creatures from Inkheart."
- Cornelia Funke
"All myths that are something more than fancies gain rather than lose in value with time, by reason of the accretions of human experience."
- Richard Le Gallienne
(Related: Experience, Time, Gain, Myths, Reason, Value)
"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves."
- Mohandas Gandhi
(Related: Age, Greatness, Being, Lies, Myth, World)
"I decided to write about the myths of divorce."
- Mary Garden
(Related: Divorce, Myths)
"I think there are a lot of myths about MS, and it may have affected my career."
- Teri Garr
(Related: Career, May, Myths)
"We must not be hampered by yesterday's myths in concentrating on today's needs."
- Harold S. Geneen
(Related: Myths, Needs, Today, Yesterday)
"Love is a deception and a trap. Love is as big a myth that God sits with his flowing white beard in a throne and looks at us."
- Al Goldstein
(Related: Love, God, Deception, Myth)
"I don't say that the supposed Civil Rights development is a myth, but it's a matter of dealing with reality. It's purely peripheral and, in many cases, it's just a facade."
- Norman Granz
(Related: Development, Civil rights, Myth, Reality)
"If you're going to be a myth or want to be a myth, you'd better die young."
- Alma Guillermoprieto
(Related: Myth, Want)
"If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic."
- Ursula K. Le Guin
(Related: Science, Technology, Fiction, Myth, Mythology)
"Most of the monsters... are based on some sort of mythology. Every culture and even some geographical areas have monsters and mythology that is their own."
- Laurell K. Hamilton
(Related: Culture, Mythology)
"The myths have always condemned those who "looked back." Condemned them, whatever the paradise may have been which they were leaving. Hence this shadow over each departure from your decision."
- Dag Hammarskjold
(Related: Decision, Departure, Paradise, May, Myths, Shadow)
"What we're doing with Band of Brothers is trying to put it into human terms, so it is not just a flickering, black and white myth on a screen, it is a resonant story. I want the audience to recognize themselves in these men. They're not just mythic heroes."
- Tom Hanks
(Related: Men, Brothers, Heroes, Myth, Trying, Want)
"There's a myth that Roosevelt gave Stalin Eastern Europe. I was with Roosevelt every day at Yalta."
- W. Averell Harriman
(Related: Day, Europe, Myth)
"The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill."
- Robert Heller
(Related: Success, Management, First, Myth, Skill)
"Religion often partakes of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future."
- Frank Herbert
(Related: Religion, Progress, Future, Myth)
"As Plotinus tells us, we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belongs to its necessity."
- James Hillman
(Related: Soul, Body, Circumstances, Myth, Necessity, Parents)
"They do not depend upon mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine and that the Japanese people are superior to other races."
- Emperor Hirohito
(Related: People, Legends, Myths)
"Myth is supposed to bring us together, but fantasy alienates us."
- Dustin Hoffman
(Related: Fantasy, Myth)
"Postmodernists believe that truth is myth, and myth, truth. This equation has its roots in pop psychology. The same people also believe that emotions are a form of reality. There used to be another name for this state of mind. It used to be called psychosis."
- Brad Holland
(Related: Truth, People, Emotions, Mind, Myth, Name, Psychology, Reality, State)
"That religious earnestness forever tends toward fright and hence towards brittleness and inquisition is clear enough in mythology and history."
- Thomas Howard
(Related: History, Mythology, Religious)
"I was warned not to do it. Actors who play Jesus are supposed to have a hard time getting other roles to follow, but I felt this was a myth. After all, how can you be typecast as Christ?"
- Jeffrey Hunter
(Related: Time, Actors, Christ, Myth, Play)
"Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them."
- Hypatia
(Related: Mind, Miracles, Myths, Pain, Tragedy, Years)
"In the most important sense a creationist is a person who believes in creation, and that includes people who believe that Genesis is a myth and that creation involved a process called evolution and consumed billions of years."
- Phillip E. Johnson
(Related: People, Creation, Evolution, Myth, Sense, Years)
"Nothing will see us through the age we're entering but high consciousness, and that comes hard. We don't have a good, modern myth yet, and we need one."
- Robert Johnson
(Related: Age, Consciousness, Myth, Nothing, Will)
"If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine."
- Diana Wynne Jones
(Related: Myth)
"Once you begin to explain or excuse all events on racial grounds, you begin to indulge in the perilous mythology of race."
- James Earl Jones
(Related: Events, Mythology, Race)
"You know why we're stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don't let themselves feel things."
- Janis Joplin
(Related: Soul, People, Myth)
"People say that I'm always late, but that's a myth."
- Milla Jovovich
(Related: People, Myth)
"It is difficult to separate, at times, the myth from the truth."
- Bob Kane
(Related: Truth, Myth)
"I intend to explode the myths about myself and get down to the real truth about the legend that is Batman."
- Bob Kane
(Related: Truth, Myths)
"One must not believe any of those mythologies about oneself as an artist."
- Anish Kapoor
(Related: Artist)
"Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies."
- Anish Kapoor
(Related: Artists)
"I am Indian, and I'm proud of it. Indian life is mythologically rich and powerful."
- Anish Kapoor
(Related: Life)
"The notion that Jews are mythic creatures is well circulating in our culture."
- Steven T. Katz
(Related: Culture)
"Something fundamental about the myth of the Jew has resurfaced."
- Steven T. Katz
(Related: Myth)
"If you take different mythologies from different cultures, the names may change and the story lines may vary but there is always something in common."
- Maynard James Keenan
(Related: Change, May, Names)
"Most religious stories and mythologies have some sort of similar root, some sort of global archetypes."
- Maynard James Keenan
(Related: Religious)
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."
- John F. Kennedy
(Related: Truth, Lie, Enemy, Myth)
"You're basing your laws and your whole outlook on natural life on mythology. It won't work. That's why you have all these problems in the world. Name them: India, Pakistan, Ireland. Name them-all these problems. They're all religious problems."
- Jack Kevorkian
(Related: Life, Work, Ireland, Laws, Mythology, Name, Problems, Religious, World)
"Many of us view the bible and other religious teachings as mythology."
- Richard King
(Related: Bible, Mythology, Religious)
"To us, basing stories on christianity is the same as basing stories on Roman mythology, Native American folklore, or unsubstantiated government conspiracies."
- Richard King
(Related: Government, Christianity, American, Mythology)
"There are a lot of myths about my injuries. They say I have broken every bone in my body. Not true. But I have broken 35 bones. I had surgery 14 times to pin and plate. I shattered my pelvis. I forget all of the things that have broke."
- Evel Knievel
(Related: Body, Forget, Myths)
"Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. We have need for them. They represent the wisdom of our race."
- Stanley Kunitz
(Related: Wisdom, Gods, Heroes, Mind, Myths, Old, Race, Waiting)
"I wanted to connect a modern story with a myth that I had read."
- Wally Lamb
(Related: Myth)
"Successful model? That's a myth. The year I modeled was the most painful year of my life. Editors would always talk to you in the third person as though you were merely a piece of merchandise."
- Jessica Lange
(Related: Life, Successful, Editors, Myth, Talk)
"In families there is always the mythology. My father died when my kids were quite young still, and yet they still tell his stories. That is how a person lives on."
- Jessica Lange
(Related: Father, Kids, Mythology)
"There was that feminist myth that we can do everything. I don't think you can."
- Jessica Lange
(Related: Myth)
"The hero, the mythical subject, is constructed as human being and as male; he is the active principle of culture, the establisher of distinction, the creator of differences."
- Teresa de Lauretis
(Related: Being, Culture)
"Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Experience, Soul, Purpose, Blood, Deep, Myth)
"I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?"
- John Lennon
(Related: Dreams, Fairies, Mind, Myths, Now)
"I like songs and film because you can turn your life into a sort of myth or dream."
- Sean Lennon
(Related: Life, Dream, Film, Myth, Songs)
"I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact."
- Claude Levi-Strauss
(Related: Men, Being, Fact, Myths)
"We read Greek and Norse mythology until it came out of our ears. And the Bible."
- Penelope Lively
(Related: Bible, Mythology)
"V is like a mythical situation. It's an allegory for what could happen. V has philosophies within it that actually warn against things like that happening."
- David Lloyd
"The ancient Greeks have a knack of wrapping truths in myths."
- George Lloyd
(Related: Myths)
"It seems obvious to me that the notion of God has never been anything but a kind of ideal projection, a reflection upward of the human personality, and that theology never has been and never can be anything but a more and more purified mythology."
- Alfred Loisy
(Related: God, Mythology, Obvious, Personality, Reflection, Theology)
"In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us."
- Audre Lorde
(Related: Giving, Myth, Words)
"I don't care what people's myths are about me."
- Kelly Lynch
(Related: People, Care, Myths)
"On The Practice, I get to do what I love to do, and I am making a contribution that will, in the end, help raise social consciousness, dispel some of the myths about being large, and change the way that people view and interact with large people."
- Camryn Manheim
(Related: Change, Love, People, Being, Consciousness, End, Help, Myths, Practice, Will)
"For the myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious."
- Thomas Mann
(Related: Life, Formula, Myth, Unconscious)
"It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths."
- Greil Marcus
(Related: Culture, End, Myths)
"Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.'"
- Paul McCartney
(Related: Myth)
"True friendships don't fade in Hollywood, as so many myths about show business would have you insist."
- Kent McCord
(Related: Business, Hollywood, Myths)
"I wanted to rock back and forth between myth and distant futures, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It felt a bit like prophecy and a bit like storytelling."
- George Murray
(Related: Myth, Prophecy, Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday)
"The higher Greek poetry did not make up fictitious plots; its business was to express the heroic saga, the myths."
- Gilbert Murray
(Related: Business, Poetry, Myths)
"But my most favourite pursuit, after my daily exertions at the Foundry, was Astronomy. There were frequently clear nights when the glorious objects in the Heavens were seen in most attractive beauty and brilliancy."
- James Nasmyth
(Related: Beauty, Astronomy, Pursuit)
"Time passed by. I had furnished steam hammers to the principal foundries in England. I had sent them abroad, even to Russia. At length it became known to the Lords of the Admiralty that a new power in forging had been introduced."
- James Nasmyth
(Related: Power, Time, England, Russia)
"OUR history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us."
- James Nasmyth
(Related: History, Race)
"My father was always anxious to give pleasure to his children. Accordingly, he took me one day, as a special treat, to the top of the grand old tower, to see the chimes played."
- James Nasmyth
(Related: Father, Children, Day, Old, Pleasure)
"In order to keep pace with the influx of work I had to take on fresh hands."
- James Nasmyth
(Related: Work, Order)
"In course of time the Brothers Cowper removed the manufacture of their printing machines from London, to Manchester. There they found skilled and energetic workmen, ready to carry their plans into effect."
- James Nasmyth
(Related: Time, Brothers, Effect, London, Machines, Printing)
"In 1854 I took out a patent for puddling iron by means of steam."
- James Nasmyth
"Everything connected with war and warlike exploits is interesting to a boy."
- James Nasmyth
(Related: War)
"Week by week my orders grew, and the flat of the old mill soon assumed a very busy aspect."
- James Nasmyth
(Related: Old)
"From a very early period of my life I have derived the highest enjoyment from listening to music, especially to melody, which is to me the most pleasing form of composition."
- James Nasmyth
(Related: Life, Music, Enjoyment, Listening)
"They just have a feel about them. And you feel your way through them and you come out with something that's very powerful and mythic. And you don't quite know how you got there. I think this story has a lot of those elements."
- Michael O'Donoghue
"Our invisibility is the essence of our oppression. And until we eliminate that invisibility, people are going to be able to perpetuate the lies and myths about gay people."
- Jean O'Leary
(Related: People, Gay, Lies, Myths, Oppression)
"Myths which are believed in tend to become true."
- George Orwell
(Related: Myths)
"Heavy pillars, carved from the rock, bear the roof. Slowly, one's eyes become accustomed to the dim light; then they can make out marvelous representations from Indian mythology carved on the walls."
- Rudolf Otto
(Related: Eyes, Light, Mythology)
"Out with stereotypes, feminism proclaims. But stereotypes are the west's stunning sexual personae, the vehicles of art's assault against nature. The moment there is imagination, there is myth."
- Camille Paglia
(Related: Art, Imagination, Nature, Feminism, Myth)
"As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth."
- Boris Pasternak
(Related: Men, Power, Truth, Myth)
"Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths."
- Karl Popper
(Related: Science, Criticism, Myths)
"Therapy, as opposed to analysis, is a whole construct of myth, beautiful and creative."
- Dennis Potter
(Related: Myth, Therapy)
"In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth."
- V. S. Pritchett
(Related: Family, Myth)
"Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels."
- Willard Van Orman Quine
(Related: Change, Myth, Semantics, Words)
"When they first cast me, I was a pretty avid fan and vampire movies and Celtic mythology, so I was excited to get a chance to walk in Doyle's shoes and have fun with it."
- Glenn Quinn
(Related: Movies, Chance, First, Fun, Mythology, Pretty)
"I believe in mythology. I guess I share Joseph Campbell's notion that a culture or society without mythology would die, and we're close to that."
- Robert Redford
(Related: Society, Culture, Mythology)
"I'm fascinated by almost any mythology that I can get my hands on."
- Anne Rice
(Related: Mythology)
"I'm usually working on my own mythology, my own realm of created characters. Stories in mythology inspire me, though I may not be conscious of it."
- Anne Rice
(Related: May, Mythology)
"But myth is something else than an explanation of the world, of history, and of destiny."
- Paul Ricoeur
(Related: History, Destiny, Myth, World)
"Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence."
- Paul Ricoeur
(Related: Existence, Man, Myth, Understanding, World)
"One thing I can say about the Motown acts is that we were a family. That's not a myth."
- Smokey Robinson
(Related: Family, Myth)
"Today a new faith is stirring: the myth of blood, the faith that along with blood we are defending the divine nature of man as a whole."
- Alfred Rosenberg
(Related: Faith, Nature, Blood, Man, Myth, Today)
"If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas."
- Mark Rothko
(Related: Ideas, Myths, Titles)
"I would be copping out if I stayed in the myth of the '60s."
- Jerry Rubin
(Related: Myth)
"It seems like a totally gratuitous myth to tell people a giant rabbit comes round at night leaving candy in a haphazard way around the house... and the cover shows the bunny caught in the act."
- Todd Rundgren
(Related: People, Act, Myth, Night)
"There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Life, Help, Man, Myths)
"Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny."
- George Santayana
(Related: Peace, Religion, Soul, Destiny, Help, Myth)
"My grandparents told endless stories about the town they were from. It became an almost mythic place."
- Vincent Schiavelli
(Related: Grandparents)
"Every country that has experimented with women in actual combat has abandoned the idea, and the notion that Israel uses women in combat is a feminist myth."
- Phyllis Schlafly
(Related: Women, Idea, Country, Israel, Myth)
"Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical."
- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(Related: Christianity, Mythology, Nothing, Witty)
"In the world of language, or in other words in the world of art and liberal education, religion necessarily appears as mythology or as Bible."
- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(Related: Art, Religion, Education, Bible, Language, Liberal, Mythology, Words, World)
"Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response."
- Arthur M. Schlesinger
(Related: Science, Technology, Memory, Myth, Tradition)
"The Roswell incident, for instance, had over three hundred witnesses - some describing the bodies, some the craft, some the military procedures. Were they all perpetuating their own lives in a myth?"
- Dwight Schultz
(Related: Military, Myth)
"We have a sense that we should be like the mythical cowboy... able to take on and conquer anything and live in the world without the need for other people."
- Morrie Schwartz
(Related: People, Sense, World)
"It did remind me of something out of Greek mythology - the richest king who gets everything he wants, but ultimately his family has a curse on it from the Gods."
- Martin Scorsese
(Related: Family, Gods, Mythology)
"My secret ambition was always to provide music for animation films: something with an Indian theme, either a fairy tale or mythological tale or on the Krishna theme. I still have a very deep desire, but these sorts of chances don't always come."
- Ravi Shankar
(Related: Music, Ambition, Animation, Deep, Desire)
"Myths are stories that express meaning, morality or motivation. Whether they are true or not is irrelevant."
- Michael Shermer
(Related: Motivation, Morality, Meaning, Myths)
"Plato wove historical fact into literary myth."
- Michael Shermer
(Related: Fact, Literary, Myth)
"But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths."
- Michael Shermer
(Related: Age, Science, Myths)
"I think the rock'n'roll myth of living on the edge is a pile of crap."
- Robert Smith
(Related: Living, Myth)
"This being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often assigned to it in the scientific study of ancient faiths."
- William Robertson Smith
(Related: Being, Mythology, Study)
"The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper... no one cared what he believed about its origin."
- William Robertson Smith
(Related: Fancy, Interest, Myths, Worship)
"In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place of dogma; that is, the sacred lore of priests and people... and these stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual."
- William Robertson Smith
(Related: Religion, People, Mythology, Ritual, Rules)
"But, strictly speaking, this mythology was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers."
- William Robertson Smith
(Related: Religion, Force, Mythology)
"But if it not be true, the myth itself requires to be explained, and every principle of philosophy and common sense demand that the explanation be sought, not in arbitrary allegorical categories, but in the actual facts of ritual or religious custom to which the myth attaches."
- William Robertson Smith
(Related: Common sense, Custom, Facts, Myth, Philosophy, Religious, Ritual)
"I love all of mythology and rules pertaining to all of the monsters, but I like to go the extra step."
- Stephen Sommers
(Related: Love, Mythology, Rules)
"A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: Fiction, Mythology)
"It's become like an urban myth. I don't know her. I don't know anybody she knows. I was standing there at the party by myself for an hour and then I left. Once I got those auditions, I worked really hard. Nobody did me any favors."
- Shannyn Sossamon
(Related: Favors, Myth, Party)
"Mexico was conquered more by manipulation of myth and archetype."
- Norman Spinrad
(Related: Manipulation, Myth)
"Italian cameramen grow up immersed in an awareness of light. It is part of their mythology."
- Barbara Steele
(Related: Awareness, Light, Mythology)
"The point of mythology or myth is to point to the horizon and to point back to ourselves: This is who we are; this is where we came from; and this is where we're going. And a lot of Western society over the last hundred years - the last 50 years really - has lost that. We have become rather aimless and wandering."
- J. Michael Straczynski
(Related: Society, Myth, Mythology, Years)
"Myths are a waste of time. They prevent progression."
- Barbra Streisand
(Related: Time, Myths, Waste)
"The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong."
- Clarence Thomas
(Related: People, Myths, Wrong)
"Unfortunately, a lot of the concepts in the Bible are based on ancient mythology that doesn't fit the findings of science."
- Clyde Tombaugh
(Related: Science, Bible, Mythology)
"What theatre started to look at much earlier than any other form was the internal operations of ordinary people, sometimes using mythic models in order to tell the story."
- Pete Townshend
(Related: People, Order, Theatre)
"When I was younger, I was fascinated by David Bowie, for example. he had created an entire myth around himself. It was as important as his music."
- Lars von Trier
(Related: Music, Example, Myth)
"From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality."
- Leon Trotsky
(Related: People, Being, Myth, Reality)
"The myth that John Locke was the philosopher behind the American Republic, is easily refuted by examining how Locke's philosophy steered Thomas Jefferson, for example."
- Robert Trout
(Related: American, Example, Myth, Philosophy)
"The myth that the founding of American Republic was based on the philosophy of John Locke could only have been maintained, because the history of Leibniz's influence was suppressed."
- Robert Trout
(Related: History, American, Founding, Influence, Myth, Philosophy)
"Even befor doing this film, I've always been interested in mythology."
- Rachel True
(Related: Film, Mythology)
"It was a myth that's often perpetuated at commencement that holds that only hope and promise lie beyond the halls of academe. Don't worry, be happy. Everything is fine."
- Paul Tsongas
(Related: Lie, Hope, Myth, Promise, Worry)
"I am attracted to myths."
- Tina Turner
(Related: Myths)
"Myth is, after all, the neverending story."
- Joan D. Vinge
(Related: Myth)
"Here was a fragment of Goddess myth that, through all its permutations, had somehow escaped being turned on its head. It was the perfect springboard for the sort of novel I wanted to write."
- Joan D. Vinge
(Related: Being, Myth)
"Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning."
- Joan D. Vinge
(Related: Time, Body, Meaning, Myth, Traditions)
"Let us embrace Science and the new technologies unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease, death and the sweat of labor."
- Claude Vorilhon
(Related: Age, Death, Science, God, Disease, Labor, Mankind, Myth, Old, Will)
"Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape, sometimes out of one's cultural myths, and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins."
- Diane Wakoski
(Related: Poetry, American, Gender, Myths, Race)
"From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not."
- Diane Wakoski
(Related: Poetry, American, Myth, Reading)
"The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people."
- Henry A. Wallace
(Related: People, Efficiency, Myth)
"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life."
- Robert Penn Warren
(Related: Life, End, Light, Man, May, Myth)
"The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it - aliens."
- Alan Watts
(Related: Common sense, Culture, Myths, Universe)
"A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world."
- Alan Watts
(Related: Myth, Sense, World)
"We each have a personal myth, a vision of who we really are and what we want. Health means that part of what you want is to give to others."
- George Weinberg
(Related: Health, Vision, Myth, Want)
"All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent."
- Tennessee Williams
(Related: God, Mythology)
"Most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves."
- Robert Anton Wilson
(Related: Truth, People, Myth)
"Humans live through their myths and only endure their realities."
- Robert Anton Wilson
(Related: Myths)
"There have been a number of us working very, very hard to bring myth and fairy tales into public consciousness, through fantasy literature and other media. I hope we're succeeding in some small way."
- Terri Windling
(Related: Hope, Consciousness, Fantasy, Literature, Media, Myth, Public)
"No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society."
- Naomi Wolf
(Related: Beauty, Society, Appearance, May, Myth, Saying, Will, Woman)
"And I feel that we in our society should not be held by any such myth; that we should do everything we can to gain a delight and joy in our society with all the available parts of the palette."
- Minoru Yamasaki
(Related: Society, Delight, Gain, Joy, Myth)
"I grew up under Thatcher. I grew up believing that I was fundamentally powerless. Then gradually over the years it occurred to me that this was actually a very convenient myth for the state."
- Thom Yorke
(Related: Myth, State, Years)
"I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier."
- Sarah Zettel
(Related: Science, Technology, Fantasy, Myth, Understanding)
"Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt."
- Sarah Zettel
(Related: American, Glory, Guilt, Myth, Now)
"What if the Soviet intervention was a blessing in disguise? It saved the myth that if the Soviets were not to intervene, there would have been some flowering authentic democratic socialism and so on. I'm a little bit more of a pessimist there. I think that the Soviets - it's a very sad lesson - by their intervention, saved the myth."
- Slavoj Zizek
(Related: Disguise, Myth, Socialism)
"There is a segment of the American population that has been excluded from the national myth, and that should be redressed."
- Edward Zwick
(Related: American, Myth, Population)