Quotes About Myth

What with the political monopoly, the Cheka and the Red Army, all that now existed of the 'Commune-State' of our dreams was a theoretical myth. The war, the internal measures against counterrevolution, and the famine (which had created a bureaucratic rationing apparatus) had killed off Soviet democracy. How could it revive, and when? The Party lived in the certain knowledge that the slightest relaxation of its authority would give day to reaction.

As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement.

If we want liberation, we must rewrite the Sleeping Beauty myth. No one is coming and no one else is to blame.

People tend to think that in order to start a new business they have to come up with something new and dazzling, but that's a myth - and it's often propagated by venture capitalists.

What do I think about the story? he asked himself. I don't even know if we've got the right version. But no, that's not the point. The right version would presumably be true, and a legend doesn't have to be true, it has other things to do.

Mythology is much better stuff than history. It has form; logic; a message.

There's this piece of contemporary mythology that the forties are the best time of your life. A load of cock, so far as I'm concerned.

Laszlo's histrionics, which induce pursed lips and heavy silences in Lisa or in Sylvia, have been for me the breath of alien other worlds; they evoke the tumultuous unfettered society of Eastern Europe - languages I do not speak, cities I do not know, saints and tyrants and forests and vampires, a past that is more myth than history and all the better for it.

Nothing is further from the truth than the hoary myth of the Populists that the small man is being squeezed out of the marketplace by the giants. The innovative growth companies of the last twenty-five years all started as small businesses. And by and large the small businesses have done far better than the giants.

Science asks what and how, philosophy asks why, myth and religion ask who. Who's

Not all who listen, believe. If you call the Gospel a crazy fairy tale, a far-too-good-to-be-true myth, an insane extension of wishful thinking, or even a blasphemous lie, I will respect you and argue with you. But if you call it a platitude, I can only pity you, for that means you have never listened to it.

Legend has it he was killed in a place called Durban, which is in the KwaZulu-Natal province. Which is, uh, where? Nellie said. Past the Mpumalanga province, Dan replied. Thanks a lot.

Some of what we learned early on turned out to be true (the earth is round; if you want a friend be a friend; cleanliness is next to impossible) and some of it turned out to be false (Santa Claus; the Tooth Fairy; Kansas is more fun than Oz).

In Joseph Campbell's popular book of essays Myths to Live By, he described something pertinent to our theme of sacred journeys: "The ultimate aim of the quest, if one is to return, must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.

regimes of the twentieth century depended not just on repression and control of the populace but on the active construction of national myth. Here the state leaders adopt the role of wise, courageous patriarchs who bravely resist decadent and predatory foreign influence, while the self-sacrifice expected of citizens is celebrated with heroic images and narratives. The state becomes the source of moral virtue.

And yet now and then he let himself steal a glance at her. Lovely dark colors of her skin, hair, and eyes. We are half-baked compared to them. Allowed out of the kiln before we were fully done. The old aboriginal myth; the truth, there.

Siempre he creído que al menos la mitad de los personajes famosos de la historia no han existido.

All those centuries, regarded as a pretty and comforting fable by the world's intellectuals, something to lull people into accepting their fate. The understanding that, as predicted, it would one day be literally true, that it was not a myth—

A myth can be picked up by a whole society, believed and taught to the next generation. Gods, fairies, witches—believing a thing doesn't make it true. For centuries, Terrans believed the Earth was flat.

Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.

Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.

One of the most stubborn myths of American history is the idea that the frontier promoted equality of material condition.

If how we tell history is one of the ways we shape our present and future, we can do no better than to rethink the myth of the First Thanksgiving and its role in the Thanksgiving holiday.

If the Wampanoags are as much our fellow Americans as the descendants of the Pilgrims, and if their history can be as instructional and inspirational as that of the English, then why continue to tell a Thanksgiving myth that focuses exclusively on the colonists' struggles rather than theirs?