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”

  78 Copy quote

  Show source

• Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Dream, Business

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Roland Barthes

  Lying, Confession

  Roland Barthes (1973). “Mythologies”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Ansel Adams

  Struggle, World, Heroic

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  39 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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

  James Kern Feibleman

  Atheist, Believe, Cynical

  Understanding Philosophy ch. 3 (1973)

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves.

  Erich Fromm

  Dream, Communication, Important

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths”, p.13, Open Road Media

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• I drag my myth around with me.

  Orson Welles

  Deception, Drag

  Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich (1992). “This is Orson Welles”, HarperCollins Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  24 Copy quote

• All the great things have been denied and we live in an intricacy of new and local mythologies, political, economic, poetic, which are asserted with an ever-enlarging incoherence.

  Wallace Stevens

  Political, Poetic, Economic

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.17, Vintage

  83 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

  Greil Marcus

  Culture, Dead Ends, Intrigued

  Greil Marcus (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.110, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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".

  15 Copy quote

  Show source