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

  Roland Barthes

  Lying, Confession

  Roland Barthes (1973). “Mythologies”

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

  Ansel Adams

  Struggle, World, Heroic

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• Nowhere was Darwin able to point to one bona fide case of natural selection having actually generated evolutionary change in nature....Ultimately, the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century.

  Michael Denton

  Theory Of Evolution, Able, Natural

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• As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities.

  Theodor Adorno

  Successful, People, Done

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• The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Meaningful, Men, Poetry

  1958 In the Saturday Review, 22 Mar.

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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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• Freud becomes one of the dramatis personae, in fact, as discoverer of the great and beautiful modern myth of psychoanalysis. By myth, I mean a poetic, dramatic expression of a hidden truth; and in placing this emphasis, I do not intend to put into question the scientific validity of psychoanalysis.

  D. M. Thomas

  Beautiful, Truth, Mean

  1981 The White Hotel, author's note.

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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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• Mental illness is a myth, whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.

  Thomas Szasz

  Pills, Moral, Bitter

  Thomas Szasz (2017). “Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary”, p.156, Routledge

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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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• No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.

  Naomi Wolf

  Taken, Independent Women, May

  Naomi Wolf (2013). “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women”, p.274, Random House

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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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• 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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• 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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