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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• Some truths are expressed best in the form of myth.

  Ransom Riggs

  Form

  Ransom Riggs (2014). “Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children”, p.99, Quirk Books

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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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• Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. I have bought this wonderful machine — a computer ... it seems to me to be an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.

  Joseph Campbell

  Dream, Waiting, Machines

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• Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Dream, Business

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

  Roland Barthes

  Lying, Confession

  Roland Barthes (1973). “Mythologies”

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• Today the governments of Latin America should be ashamed of not havingexterminated the indigenous, at the end of the twentieth century, because weexist at the end of this century. We are not myths of the past, ruins in thejungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims ofintolerance and racism.

  Rigoberta Menchu

  Zoos, Latin, Past

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• The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact

  Joseph Campbell

  Doe, Facts, Heroic

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• 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.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Rainbow, Way, Speak

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• The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage; its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion.

  Naomi Wolf

  Lying, Moving, Men

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

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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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• 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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• The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wise, Horse, Children

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “Image and Imagination”, p.108, Cambridge University Press

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• Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them.

  Edith Hamilton

  Men, Trying, Saws

  Edith Hamilton (1969). “Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes”

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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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• A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.

  Joseph Campbell

  Depth, Consciousness, Accord

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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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• 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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• Where the myth fails, human love begins. Then we love a human being, not our dream, but a human being with flaws.

  Anais Nin

  Dream, Flaws, Failing

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• We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Believe, Hard Work, Black And White

  "Secretary Zinke, we can't afford to ignore diversity" by Andre Perry, www.cnn.com. March 27, 2018.

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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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• Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.

  Brené Brown

  Motivation, Inspiration, Inspire

  "Listening to shame". TED Talks, www.ted.com. March 2012.

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