Quotes About Myth

We tell children about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy for reasons we think emotionally sound, but then disabuse them of these myths before they've grown. Why retract? Because their well-being as adults depends on them knowing the world as it really is. We worry, and for good reason, about adults who still believe in Santa Claus.

First there was the great cosmic egg. Inside the egg was chaos, and floating in chaos was P'an Ku, the Undeveloped, the divine Embryo. And P'an Ku burst out of the egg, four times larger than any man today, with a hammer and chisel in his hand with which he fashioned the world. —The P'an Ku myths, China (around third century)

Pliny suggested that the ostrich, then newly discovered, was the result of a cross between a giraffe and a gnat. (It would, I suppose, have to be a female giraffe and a male gnat.) In practice there must be many such crosses which have not been attempted because of a certain understandable lack of motivation.

We worry, and for good reason, about adults who still believe in Santa Clause.

Knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable.

Fairy tales have their origins in reality, Auris. In this world, if not in the one you think you came from. Nothing comes from a void; all things have some connection to truth.

I hope to show in the process that critical analysis can be fun, and in doing so help to demolish the myth that analysis is the enemy of enjoyment.

Marx rejeitava era o mito sentimental do Estado como fonte de harmonia, pacificamente unindo diferentes grupos e classes. Para ele, o Estado era mais uma fonte de divisão do que de concórdia

Everybody knows it. Wizards are supposed to have beards. It's common knowledge.

superstition needs no grounding in truth, but once rooted, it grows a strong though twisted tree.

Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

Despite rumor, Death isn't cruel--merely terribly, terribly good at his job.

He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.

It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys.

Why not? If enough people believe, you can be god of anything…

Legends don't have to make sense. They just have to be beautiful. Or at least interesting.

Gods?" said Xeno. "We don't bother with gods. Huh. Relics of an outmoded belief system, gods." There was a rumble of thunder from the clear evening sky. "Except for Blind Io the Thunder God," Xeno went on, his tone hardly changing.

The trouble with gods is that after enough people start believing in them, they begin to exist. And what begins to exist isn't what was originally intended.

I thought dwarfs loved gold, said Angua. They just say that to get it into bed.

What is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons?

The gods, he said. Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream.

Despite rumor, Death isn't cruel—merely terribly, terribly good at his job.

But all them things exist, said Nanny Ogg. That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.