Myth Quotes - Page 39

• I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek.

  Alan Watts

  Lying, Games, Plot

  "The Two Hands of God : The Myths of Polarity" by Alan Watts, (p. 29), 1963.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But the myth of power is, of course, a very powerful myth, and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it. It is a myth, which, if everybody believes in it, becomes to that extent self-validating. But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to various sorts of disaster.

  Gregory Bateson

  Powerful, Believe, Self

  "Steps to an Ecology of Mind". Book by Gregory Bateson, 1972.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sappho is a great poet because she is a lesbian, which gives her erotic access to the Muse. Sappho and the homosexual-tending Emily Dickinson stand alone above women poets, because poetry's mystical energies are ruled by a hierach requiring the sexual subordination of her petitioners. Women have achieved more as novelists than as poets because the social novel operates outside the ancient marriage of myth and eroticism.

  Camille Paglia

  Giving, Erotic, Energy

  "Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinso". Book by Camille Paglia, 1990.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is hard for many people to give up the religion in which they were born; to admit that their fathers were utterly mistaken, and that the sacred records of their country are but collections of myths and fables.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Country, Giving Up, Father

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.314, Library of Alexandria

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The work of the painter, the poet or the musician, like the myths and symbols of the savage, ought to be seen by us, if not as a superior form of knowledge, at least as the most fundamental and the only one really common to us all; scientific thought is merely the sharp point more penetrating because it has been whetted on the stone of fact, but at the cost of some loss of substance and its effectiveness is to be explained by its power to pierce sufficiently deeply for the main body of the tool to follow the head.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Loss, Effectiveness, Musician

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.121, Penguin

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• We're separated by our myths.

  Hugh Hefner

  Mythology

  "Hugh Hefner: What I've Learned" by Wil S. Hylton, www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rumors and reports of man's relation with animals are the world's oldest news stories, headlined in the stars of the zodiac, posted on the walls of prehistoric caves, inscribed in the languages of Egyptian myth, Greek philosophy, Hindu religion, Christian art, our own DNA. Belonging within the circle of mankind's intimate acquaintance ... constant albeit speechless companions, they supplied energies fit to be harnessed or roasted.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Christian, Art, Stars

  11 Copy quote

• In myths the warrant of grace was the acceptance of sacrifice; it is this acceptance that love, the re-enactment of sacrifice, beseeches if it is not to feel under a curse.

  Theodor Adorno

  Love, Acceptance, Sacrifice

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.217, Verso

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Literally, the Bible is a gigantic myth, a narrative extending over the whole of time from creation to apocalypse, unified by a body of recurring imagery that "freezes" into a single metaphor cluster, the metaphors all being identified with the body of the Messiah, the man who is all men, the totality logoi who is one Logos, the grain of sand that is the world.

  Northrop Frye

  Men, World, Body

  "The Great Code: The Bible and Literature". Book by Northrop Frye, 1981.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lacking positive myths to guide him, many a sensitive contemporary man finds only the model of the machine beckoning him from every side to make himself over into its image.

  Rollo May

  Men, Sides, Machines

  "Psychology and the Human Dilemma". Book by Rollo May, p. 30, 1967.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of "rags to riches" were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control.

  Howard Zinn

  Men, Class, Rags

  Howard Zinn (2015). “A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present”, p.254, Routledge

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I get offered varied parts, often super sexy roles. But I still think it's an issue to find the good scripts. It's a myth that you win an Oscar and you get more opportunities, and this doesn't just go for me.

  Halle Berry

  Sexy, Thinking, Winning

  "Anything to Do With Taking Off Your Clothes Comes My Way". Evening Standard, May 22, 2006.

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• Facts are subversive. Subversive of the claims made by democratically elected leaders as well as dictators, by biographers and autobiographers, spies and heroes, torturers and post-modernists. Subversive of lies, half-truths, myths; of all those "easy speeches that comfort cruel men.

  Timothy Garton Ash

  Lying, Hero, Men

  Timothy Garton Ash (2012). “Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade without a Name”, p.10, Atlantic Books Ltd

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In myths things always turn into their opposites as one version supersedes the next.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Opposites, Next, Turns

  Samuel R. Delany (2011). “Einstein Intersection”, p.28, Wesleyan University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Because of the myth of progress, it is much easier to sell a man an electric razor than a straight-edged one.

  Jacques Ellul

  Men, Progress, Razors

  "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes". Book by Jacques Ellul, translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner,, 1965.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think it's a bit of a myth that black Americans need one leader. We're not a monolith. And now that legal segregation and discrimination has been pretty much abolished there isn't the sort of universal mandate that a black leader would have. Black folks live in a wide variety of social situations right now.

  John Legend

  Thinking, Leader, Black

  "Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. with John Legend". Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. April 4, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I only choose to write about people who are alive, are extremely powerful and as such have influenced our lives. I try to go behind their constructed myths to find the humanity of the person. It takes me about four years on every book and requires hundreds of interviews so I choose people whose lives I respect and achievements are worth recording.

  Kitty Kelley

  Powerful, Book, Writing

  "Kitty Kelley discusses Oprah bio". Online Chat, www.washingtonpost.com. April 28, 2010.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• All myth is an enriched pattern, a two-faced proposition, allowing its operator to say one thing and mean another, to lead a double life.

  Anne Carson

  Mean, Two, Patterns

  Anne Carson (2009). “The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos”, p.31, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Scientists have long known that Darwinism is false. They have adhered to the myth out of self-interest and a zealous desire to put down God.

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Self, Long, Desire

  "Berkeley Law Professor Finds Darwin Wanting: Author Calls Evolution 'Imaginative Story'". Interview with Claire Cooper, Sacramento Bee, 3, p. B5, June 3, 1991.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Western countries allow no freedom of expression, which they claim to advocate, with regard to the myth of the massacre of Jews known as the holocaust, and nobody in the West enjoys the freedom of expression to deny it or raise doubts about it.

  Ali Khamenei

  Country, Expression, Holocaust

  "Leader's Address to Air Force Servicemen". www.leader.ir. February 07, 2006.

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• Congress has always had a soft spot for "experts" who tell members what they want to hear, whether it's supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth.

  Paul Krugman

  Cutting, Climate, Experts

  11 Copy quote

• Not in the name of a necessary protection of the white race did the European break into China, but for the benefit of the Jewish-mercantile greed for profit. He thus dishonored himself, destroying a whole civilization, provoking justified indignation. China fights for its myth, for its race, and its ideals, as does the renewal-movement in Germany against the mercantile race that rules all stock markets and the actions of most governments.

  Alfred Rosenberg

  Fighting, Civilization, Names

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

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Alongside the mythos of the eternal free soul stands the Myth, the religion of the blood.

  Alfred Rosenberg

  Blood, Soul, Eternal

  "The Myth of the Twentieth Century". Book by Alfred Rosenberg, p. 161, 1930.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Myths often do a lot of theoretical good, while they are still new.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Stills, Theoretical

  Gilbert Ryle (2015). “The Concept of Mind”, p.17, Lulu Press, Inc

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.. ...(they) express something real and existing in ourselves.

  Mark Rothko

  Real, Fall, Ideas

  Mark Rothko (1997). “Mark Rothko”, Stewart Tabori & Chang

  23 Copy quote

  Show source