Myth Quotes - Page 22

• It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.

  Doris Lessing

  Dream, Hurt, Phoenix

  "A hunger for books" by Doris Lessing, www.theguardian.com. December 8, 2007.

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• God doesn't start wars. That's the greatest load of nonsense. Mankind starts wars. But then we bless armies to go and kill in God's name. Somebody's got to blow that myth out of the water.

  Betty Williams

  War, Army, Blow

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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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• Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths. By finding your own dream and following it through, it will lead you to the myth-world in which you live. But just as in dream, the subject and object, though they seem to be separate, are really the same.

  Joseph Campbell

  Dream, World, Following

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• Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Odds, Two, Limits

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• There is no line between the 'real world' and 'world of myth and symbol.' Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination.

  William S. Burroughs

  Real, Impact, World

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• Am I a myth? Am I a legend? Or am I a phenomenon?

  Scott Steiner

  Legends, Phenomenon

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• The constancies and equivalences adumbrated work havoc with such settled topical blocks as myth and philosophy, natural reason and revelation, philosophy and religion, or the Orient with its cyclical time and Christianity with its linear history. And what is modem about the modem mind, one may ask, if Hegel, Comte, or Marx, in order to create an image of history that will support their ideological imperialism, still use the same techniques for distorting the reality of history as their Sumerian predecessors?

  Eric Voegelin

  Block, Philosophy, Reality

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• The director, Antoine Fuqua, relies on small details, which anchor the vigilante-as-saint myth in at least a minimal degree of reality.

  David Denby

  Reality, Anchors, Small Details

  "The Equalizer" by David Denby, www.newyorker.com.

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• Being here really is just the invitation to rest as Being. There is nothing you have to do. It is not an invitation to become. You will not be scrutinized, your actions compared with those of others. Thats just unicorn food. Let your river flow as it pleases. Simply observe and recognise that all is unfolding spontaneously when that inner journalist- the ego, is exposed as a myth.

  Mooji

  Rivers, Ego, Flow

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• From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths and its direction toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth.

  Janet Frame

  Memories, Darkness Within, Light

  Janet Frame (1998). “The Complete Autobiography”, Womens PressLtd

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• Today a new faith is awakening — the Myth of the blood; the belief that to defend the blood is also to defend the divine nature of man in general. It is a belief, effulgent with the brightest knowledge, that Nordic blood represents that Mysterium which has overcome and replaced the older sacraments.

  Alfred Rosenberg

  Men, Blood, Overcoming

  "The Myth of the Twentieth Century". Book by Alfred Rosenberg, p. 65, 1930.

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• If we continue to tell ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to ourselves that the problem of mass incarceration is just too big, too daunting for us to do anything about and that we should instead direct our energies to battles that might be more easily won, history will judge us harshly. A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch.

  Michelle Alexander

  Rights, Judging, Progress

  Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.15, The New Press

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• This is the power of myth: that we can experience invisible spiritual realities and truths greater than visible, material things in story form.

  John Granger

  Spiritual, Reality, Stories

  John Granger (2010). “How Harry Cast His Spell: The Meaning Behind the Mania for J. K. Rowling's Bestselling Books”, p.94, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• The myth of the first world is that
  development is wealth and technology progress.
  It is all rubbish.
  It means that you are no longer human beings
  but only labor.
  It means that the land you live on is not earth
  but only property.

  Karen Tei Yamashita

  Mean, Technology, Land

  Karen Tei Yamashita (1997). “Tropic of Orange: A Novel”

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• Congress remains in total denial as our liberties are rapidly fading before our eyes. The process is propelled by unwarranted fear and ignorance as to the true meaning of liberty. It is driven by economic myths, fallacies and irrational good intentions.

  Ron Paul

  Ignorance, Eye, Liberty

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• Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historica l, macrocosmic triumph. Whereas the former-the youngest or despised child who becomes the master of extraordinary powers-prevails over his personal oppressors, the latter brings back from his adventure the means for the regeneration of his society as a whole.

  Joseph Campbell

  Children, Hero, Adventure

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• No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic

  Richard Dawkins

  Children, Fun, Believe

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• Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods. In crisis their souls are visible.

  Anne Carson

  People, Soul, Stories

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• I'm drawn to characters who bear similarities to the protagonists in myths and legends. (...)

  Alan Lee

  Character, Legends, Bears

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• They do not depend upon mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine and that the Japanese people are superior to other races.

  Hirohito

  Race, People, Legends

  Address denying his divinity, 1 Jan. 1946

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