Myth Quotes - Page 16

• The dogma of woman's complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind.

  Mary Ritter Beard

  Women, Historical, Mind

  Mary Ritter Beard, Ann J. Lane (1977). “Making Women's History: The Essential Mary Ritter Beard”, p.185, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• A middle ground might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society's moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution. [Legalizing "same-sex marriage"] is also a chance to wholly transform the definition of family in American culture.

  Michelangelo Signorile

  Sex, Fighting, Marriage Equality

  "How We Got to the Supreme Court" by Michelangelo Signorile, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 25, 2013.

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• I always looked for a man to rescue me and bring me happiness. I bought into that myth, of course, and looked for my own Prince Charming.

  Linda Evans

  Men, Charming, Rescue

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• Once a poet calls his myth a myth, he prevents the reader from treating it as a reality; we use the word "myth" only for stories we ourselves cannot believe.

  Adam Kirsch

  Believe, Reality, Stories

  "The Mystic Word" by Adam Kirsch, www.newyorker.com. October 9, 2006.

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• Commentating, illustrating, description giving, adjective expert, analyzing, surmising musical myth seeking people of the universe, this is yours.

  T La Rock

  Rap, People, Giving

  "Rick Rubin, Russell Simmons: Def Jam's First 25 Years". Interview with Audie Cornish, www.npr.org. October 9, 2011.

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• As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality. For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived and dishonest-but the myth-persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Mythology distracts us everywhere.

  John F. Kennedy

  Lying, Moving, Past

  Yale University Commencement Address, delivered 11 June 1962

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• In any open question, we should argue from what we do know to what we do not know. We do know that fervent legends and stubborn myths arise easily and naturally. We do not know that dead people rise from the grave.

  Dan Barker

  People, Religion, Stubborn

  Dan Barker, Richard Dawkins (2008). “Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists”, p.299, Ulysses Press

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• Taste is more to do with manners than appearances. Taste is both myth and reality; it is not a style.

  Stephen Bayley

  Reality, Style, Taste

  Stephen Bayley (2000). “General Knowledge”, Booth-Clibborn

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• I don't say that the supposed Civil Rights development is a myth, but it's a matter of dealing with reality. It's purely peripheral and, in many cases, it's just a facade.

  Norman Granz

  Reality, Rights, Development

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• The common belief that coaches must be abusive to be successful is a myth. Research shows that if you find a task fun, you'll perform better. If more coaches took . . . a Golden Rule approach to coaching, treating their players the way they themselves would like to be treated, fewer athletes would drop out of sports in their teens, and more athletes at every level would be happier and more satisfied.

  Ralph Nader

  Sports, Fun, Athlete

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• The idea of a superior or inferior race is a myth that has been completely refuted by anthropological evidence.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Life, Race, Ideas

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Alex Ayres (1993). “The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr”, Plume

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• Architecture is not created by individuals. The genius sketch ... is a myth. Architecture is made by a team of committed people who work together, and in fact, success usually has more to do with dumb determination than with genius.

  Joshua Prince-Ramus

  Determination, Team, People

  "The Architect of a Different Kind of Organization" by Jena Mcgregor, www.fastcompany.com. June 1, 2005.

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• Although every organized religion works overtime to contribute its own brand of misogyny to the myth of woman-hate, woman-fear, and woman-evil, the Roman Catholic church also carries the immense power of very directly affecting women's lives everywhere by its stand against birth control and abortion, and by its use of skillful and wealthy lobbies to prevent legislative change. It is an obscenity-an all-male hierarchy, celibate or not, that presumes to rule on the lives and bodies of millions of women.

  Robin Morgan

  Fear, Hate, Evil

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• Some of us do not accept the Establishment myth that bad laws must be obeyed.

  Tom Driberg

  Law, Political, Accepting

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• Anticipating attacks, I should like to emphasize that I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views.

  George Soros

  Attitude, Believe, Israel

  "On Israel, America and AIPAC" by George Soros, www.nybooks.com. April 12, 2007.

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• I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.

  Bill Gates

  Filled In, Weather, People

  Interview with Jeff Goodell, www.rollingstone.com. March 13, 2014.

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• Writing is self-reinforcing. Don't make a fetish out of it, and don't surrender to the myth of the garret, or the myth of the chained muse. It's like playing the guitar, or practicing taekwondo, or having sex. The more you do, the better you get. The better you get, the better it feels. The better it feels, the more you want to do.

  Jay Lake

  Sex, Writing, Guitar

  Interview with Patrick Wolohan, www.sfsignal.com. August 24, 2009.

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• You need music, I don't know why. It's probably one of those Joe Campbell questions, why we need ritual. We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.

  Jerry Garcia

  Life, Music, Power

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• The idea which...shuts out the Second Coming from our minds, the idea of the world slowly ripening to perfection, is a myth, not a generalization from experience.

  C. S. Lewis

  Ideas, Perfection, Mind

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• It may be said that myths give to the transcendent reality an immanent, this-worldly objectivity. Myths speak about gods and demons as powers on which man knows himself to be dependent, powers whose favors he needs, powers whose wrath he fears. Myths express the knowledge that man is not master of the world and his life, that the world within which he lives is full of riddles and mysteries and that human life also is full of riddles and mysteries.

  Rudolf Bultmann

  Men, Reality, Wrath

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• The whole westward expansion myth is seen as romantic. But its a joke, a blot on American history.

  Frank Waters

  Expansion, American History, Whole

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• It is a myth that alcoholics have some spontaneous insight and then seek treatment. Victims of this disease do not submit to treatment out of spontaneous insight - typically, in our experience they come to their recognition scenes through a buildup of crises that crash through their almost impenetrable defense systems. They are forced to seek help; and when they don't, they perish miserably.

  Vernon Johnson

  Defense, Disease, Recognition

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• Everything is grounded in mystery. Everything is swimming, and the stable does not exist. Life is a series of guesses, and there is mystery in a match. The commonplace is the habitual, and the habitual is a mystery that has grown stale from sense-insistence. Life undulates; there is no such thing as a level; a straight line is a myth, and all directions are indirections.

  Benjamin De Casseres

  Eye, Swimming, Cells

  "Chameleon: Being a Book of My Selves".

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• Let us embrace Science and the new technologies unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease, death and the sweat of labor.

  Claude Vorilhon

  Science, Technology, Sweat

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• Hitler is still such a popular man; we are afraid of the Hitler myth. We want to give to the German people and to the world the final proof by means of the Supreme Court-Martial and its verdict.

  Walther von Brauchitsch

  Mean, Men, People

  "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal", Nuremberg, Germany, (p. 203), 1947.

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