myth quotes

Alan Watts: 

A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.

Ambrose Bierce: 

MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.

Bertrand Russell: 

What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Brad Holland: 

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.

D. H. Lawrence : 

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.

Dell Hymes: 

The shaping of deeply felt values into meaningful, apposite form, is present in all communities, and will find some means of expressions among all.

Diana Wynne Jones: 

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.

E. L. Doctorow: 

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.

George Orwell: 

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

Irwin Edman: 

It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.

Jack Zipes: 

Over the centuries we have transformed the ancient myths and folk tales and made them into the fabric of our lives. Consciously and unconsciously we weave the narratives of myth and folk tale into our daily existence.

James Feibleman: 

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

Jean Cocteau: 

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.

Joan D. Vinge: 

Myth is, after all, the neverending story.

Joan D. Vinge: 

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.

John C. Maxwell: 

The depth of your mythology is the extent of your effectiveness.

John F. Kennedy: 

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic

Joseph Campbell: 

The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul, and the great agent to assist the artist was the myth.

Karen Armstrong: 

It is, therefore, a mistake to regard myth as an inferior mode of thought, which can be cast aside when human beings have attained the age of reason. Mythology is not an early attempt at history, and does not claim that its tales are objective fact. Like a novel, an opera or a ballet, myth is make-believe; it is a game that transfigures our fragmented, tragic world, and helps us to glimpse new possibilities by asking 'what if?' – a question which has also provoked some of our most important discoveries in philosoÂphy, science and technology.

Marlene Dietrich: 

I am not a myth.

Robert Fulghum: 

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.

Robert Penn Warren: 

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 --i t is, rather, a light by which we may see -- and what we see is life.

William Robertson Smith: 

As a rule the myth is no explanation of the origin of the ritual to any one who does not believe it to be a narrative of real occurrences, and the boldest mythologist will not believe that.

William Robertson Smith : 

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.