Myth Quotes

• Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

  George Orwell

  Truth, Political, Belief

  George Orwell, Peter Hobley Davison, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “I have tried to tell the truth: 1943-1944”

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• Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Dream, Business

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• If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

  Ray Bradbury

  Dream, Growing Up, Writing

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

  John F. Kennedy

  Trust, Peace, Fear

  Kennedy, John F. (1963). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1962”, p.471, Best Books on

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• Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because there are as yet no words to enable us to get there. Myth is nourished by silence as well as by words.

  Italo Calvino

  Silence, Stories, Buried

  Italo Calvino (2017). “The Uses of Literature”, p.24, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Wisdom, Blood, Soul

  D. H. Lawrence, Mara Kalnins (2002). “Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation”, p.49, Cambridge University Press

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• Myths are made for the imagination to breath life into them.

  Albert Camus

  Imagination, Made, Breaths

  "The Myth of Sisyphus". Book by Albert Camus, 1942.

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• Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion.

  Roland Barthes

  Lying, Confession

  Roland Barthes (1973). “Mythologies”

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• There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

  Anne Nicol Gaylor

  God, Atheist, Heart

  "“No gods” solstice display returns for 7th year to Illinois Capitol". ffrf.org. December 4, 2015.

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

  Penelope Lively

  Messages, Stuff, Logic

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• Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Truth, Important

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• Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world.

  Ansel Adams

  Struggle, World, Heroic

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• 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.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Artist, Soul

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• Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.

  Joseph Campbell

  Life, Spiritual, Clue

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.5, Anchor

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• 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.

  Jean Cocteau

  Lying, Mean, Men

  "On Invisibility". "Diary of an Unknown". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1953.

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• 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.

  Jack Zipes

  Narrative, Fabric, Ancient

  Jack Zipes (2013). “Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale”, p.4, University Press of Kentucky

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• 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-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Meaningful, Writing, Men

  1958 In the Saturday Review, 22 Mar.

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• Myths are so intimately bound to culture, time, and place that unless the symbols, the metaphors, are kept alive by constant recreation through the arts, the life just slips away from them.

  Joseph Campbell

  Art, Culture, Alive

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.72, Anchor

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• For what are myths if not the imposing of order on phenomena that do not possess order in themselves? And all myths, however they differ from philosophical systems and scientific theories, share this with them, that they negate the principle of randomness in the world.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Philosophical, Order, Principles

  Stanislaw Lem (1996). “Highcastle: A Remembrance”, Mariner Books

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• We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet.

  Joseph Campbell

  Groups, Needs, Individual

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.30, Anchor

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• Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Hero, Race, Champion

  1969 'Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines Ain't What They Used To Be!', in Pageant, Sep.

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

  James Kern Feibleman

  Atheist, Believe, Cynical

  Understanding Philosophy ch. 3 (1973)

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• Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.

  Salman Rushdie

  Reality, Legends, Facts

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• The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens - at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.

  C. S. Lewis

  Heart, Osiris, Order

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

  Irwin Edman

  Business, Communication, Men

  "The world, the arts and the artist".

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