Quotes About Myth

The postwar canonizing of Southern heroes, together with the cultivation of the plantation myth, which conjured an antebellum golden age, effectively destroyed the narrative of emancipation, which had been written in the blood of war

Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it's not clear that he ever really did.

might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it's not clear that he ever really did.

Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it's not clear that he ever really did.

The notion that obedience dehumanizes those who render it is a popular cry of the philosophers of radical individualism, such as Thoreau, who are so important to America's myth of itself.

But we are all mythologies

This is another persistent myth: that Highlanders supported Bonnie Prince Charlie out of some ancient, mystical loyalty to the Stuarts. The truth was that the alliance between the Crown and the clan chieftains was one of mutual self-interest.

The notion that Culloden destroyed the Highland clans is a myth; the traditional ways had been dying for years. Long before, without realizing it, the chieftains and the Crown had conspired to obliterate the old system of loyalties and mutual dependence in order to consolidate their own power. The battle was the clans' last stand, just as the myth states. The glory was gone.

The God that Socrates presented to his disciples stood above and beyond the familiar myths and rituals. Socrates's God shares the same transcendent immortality as the soul and lies beyond all material space and time. He dwells naturally in the same afterlife as the Forms:

Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response.

Old stories often turn out to be true.

Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconsciousness with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives.

Sky was the first god. Robert knew that there was only one God and he had a Son who was also God, but there were gods who had vanished: the gods of thunder, of fire, of the wide oceans of the earth.

Ésa es nuestra auténtica patria común: relatos fieles no a lo que los hombres ven, sino a lo que los hombres sueñan

Las leyendas sólo sobreviven vistas de lejos.

The myth of self-sufficiency demands optimism without end, downplays life's challenges, and shames us when, inevitably, we fall short.

there is no magic left in England now!

There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.

Moms in fiction and memoir get a bad rap.

The greatest myth about mass incarceration is that it has been driven by crime and crime rates. It's just not true.

Oh, do not read history, for that I know must be false.

Futurism is another American myth: whether Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan or Obama, American presidents all come into office with a new program, and the conviction that the country is going to be better than ever.

Hollywood is an idea. It's not a real place.

David Ben-Gurion was a mythic figure, the founding father of Israel and a modern-day prophet, but he was also a real man who stormed through history on human legs. It was my great privilege to know him and work with him for many years.