Quotes About Myth

It didn't matter whether a thing existed or not. What mattered was the trouble caused by those who believed in its existence.

they slipped one by one again into the merely fictional – Hermes's false Egypt, and Bruno's false Hermes; Kraft's false Bruno; Pierce's false history of the world, the doors that had once blown open blowing closed again one by one down the corridor into the colored centuries.

My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.

The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland.

All myth is an enriched pattern, a two-faced proposition, allowing its operator to say one thing and mean another, to lead a double life.

When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.

Contrary to what many may think, immortality is not a fairy tale invented to compensate for an unhappy life.

The myth of the detached manipulator and compliant crowd has, since the Twenties, also been abundantly re-echoed by academic students of mass suasion.

The creation myth is a Darwinian device for survival.

Obviously no two creation stories can both be true. All of those invented by the many known thousands of religions and sects in fact have certainly been false. A great many educated citizens have realized that their own faiths are indeed false, or at least questionable in details. But they understand the rule attributed to the Roman stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger that religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

The creation myth is a Darwinian device for survival. Tribal conflict, where believers on the inside were pitted against infidels on the outside, was a principal driving force that shaped biological human nature.

Perhaps the most influential is the family myth of dire consequences, in which we feel that we are absolutely indispensable for everything in the church to work; if we don't do our job, everything will fall

Convenient mythologies require neither evidence nor logic.

demand imbalances. He believed that stories about speculators' raids were essentially ghost stories that brokers told clients to keep them in the dark

Virginity, regardless of its others' contexts and conceptions, only applies to the women, not to the men. The sexual experience does not verify or endorses the virginity in a case of the same-sex or the sex that does not tear the hymen. If the hymen stays safe, even after the sexual experience, the female is still the virgin. The hymen holds only the women, not the men. The Male remains his entire life a virgin with the sexual experience, or without that.

Legends that endure in the future...were events that took place in the distant past.

How sad for us that I have made a myth of us when what keeps me from sleeping is the memory of...your honest back turned, waiting for me to walk away from you.

It is not surprising that artists turn to drugs, alcohol, and medications to control their arousal or to recontact their inner self. But the long-term effect is a body further off balance. Moreover, it is part of the myth or archetype of the artist that any psychological help will destroy creativity by making the artist too normal.

History: gossip well told.

Buoni o cattivi, gli uomini credono tutti che a ogni loro impresa devi metterli su un altare come san Giorgio che ammazza il drago.

Don Achille was the ogre of fairy tales

as for unhappy families, star-crossed lovers, and exiled heroes, they are simply universal.

Those who reject the archetypal hypothesis remain unimpressed by the discovery of parallel themes in myths derived from different parts of the world,

An education is a powerful lever that improves—but doesn't guarantee—the chances that someone can overcome adversity and make it in spite of the barriers. The myth of the American dream really is a myth.