Myth Quotes - Page 6

• There is a sad myth going around today - the myth of neutrality. According to this myth, the secular world gives every point of view an equal chance to be heard. And it works fairly well - unless you are a Christian.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Christian, Religious, Views

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• Books are an attempt to control something that's uncontrollable. That's one of the beauties of African American life. There was this thing called slavery and adjustments were made. It literally destroyed millions, but it didn't destroy the inner lives of all the people who experienced it. There are still horrible things that go on because of the myth of race, but we don't have to succumb totally. If I had only a negative side of things to present, I think I would have much less of a drive to do it. Because what would be the point?

  John Edgar Wideman

  Book, Thinking, People

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• The logical man must either deny all miracles or none, and our American Indian myths and hero stories are perhaps, in themselves, quite as credible as those of the Hebrews of old.

  Charles Alexander Eastman

  Hero, Men, Miracle

  Charles Alexander Eastman, Michael Oren Fitzgerald (2007). “The Essential Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa): Light on the Indian World”, p.7, World Wisdom, Inc

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• Europe is so much the home of Horror, with its myths of vampires, werewolves, witchcraft and the undead, yet it's like those myths were exported to Hollywood, leaving Europe the room to develop a new tradition as a way of processing its traumas, particularly the two world wars.

  Mark Gatiss

  War, Home, Europe

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• We have this myth that if you work hard, you can accomplish anything. It's not a very American thing to say, but I don't think that's true. It's true for a lot of people, but you need other things to succeed. You need luck, you need opportunity, and you need the life skills to recognize what an opportunity is.

  David Lindsay-Abaire

  Hard Work, Opportunity, Thinking

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• I do notice that I spend a lot of all my time steeped in different forms of myth, such as English folk music, for example, not really studying it necessarily, but just trying to experience it so I can recall it later.

  Jez Butterworth

  Trying, Example, Different

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• The Santa myth is one of the most effective means ever devised for intimidating children, eroding their self- esteem, twisting their behavior, warping their values, and slowing their development of critical thinking skills.

  Tom Flynn

  Children, Self Esteem, Mean

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• Liberals and conservatives are opponents in the most literal sense, each using the myth of pure evil to demonize the other side and unite there own.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Evil, Politics, Opponents

  Jonathan Haidt (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”, p.242, Basic Books

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• Often their rage erupts because they believe that all ways of looking that highlight difference subvert the liberal belief in a universal subjectivity (we are all just people) that they think will make racism disappear. They have a deep emotional investment in the myth of sameness even as their actions reflect the primacy of whiteness as a sign informing who they are and how they think.

  Bell Hooks

  Believe, Emotional, Thinking

  bell hooks (2014). “Black Looks: Race and Representation”, p.167, Routledge

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• With the "civilized" person contentment is a myth. From the cradle to the grave they are forever longing and striving after something better, an indefinable something, some new object yet unattained.

  William Matthews

  Forever, Contentment, Longing

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• American public policy is run on a myth.

  Richard Lamm

  Running, Policy, Public Policy

  "Lamm on the Line". Interview with Peter Doskoch, www.psychologytoday.com. September 1, 1996.

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• The myth of the strong black woman is the other side of the coin of the myth of the beautiful dumb blonde.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Beautiful, Strong, Women

  ELDRIDGE CLEAVER (1968). “SOUL ON ICE”

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• The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not.

  J. G. Ballard

  Thinking, Views, Enlightenment

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• I've just always had a personal fascination with the myth of Abraham Lincoln. And once you start to read about him and the Civil War and everything leading up to the Civil War, you start to understand that the myth is created when we think we understand a character and we reduce him to a kind of cultural national stereotype.

  Steven Spielberg

  War, Character, Thinking

  "Steven Spielberg And Daniel Day-Lewis Talk 'Lincoln'". Interview with Roth Cornet, screenrant.com. November 26, 2012.

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• Jesse [James] was known as a kind of Robin Hood character and also it was known that his exploits were somewhat dubious - however, he perpetuated this myth. Our film [The Assassination of Jesse James] really takes place at the end of all that, the last year of his life, at the end of all that celebrity.

  Brad Pitt

  Character, Years, Dubious

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• When those myths were created, when the Bible was written, man didn't know what an atom or a germ was, or where the sun went at night, or why the women got pregnant. [Laughs.] They needed stories to answer the questions.

  Bill Maher

  Night, Men, Laughing

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Believe, Hero

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• Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place i1legally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1,500 percent since legalization.

  Bernard Nathanson

  Mean, Media, Numbers

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• Antiquity breached mortality with myths.
  Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates
  A cornice on the Third National Bank.

  Allen Tate

  Vocabulary, Mortality, Hermes

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.11, Macmillan

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• We become male automatically because of the Y chromosome and the little magic peanut, but if we are to become men we need the helpof other men--we need our fathers to model for us and then to anoint us, we need our buddies to share the coming-of-age rituals with us and to let us join the team of men, and we need myths of heroes to inspire us and to show us the way.

  Frank Pittman

  Father, Team, Hero

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• As a guy develops and practices his masculinity, he is accompanied by an invisible male chorus of all the other guys, who hiss orcheer as he attempts to approximate the masculine ideal, who push him to sacrifice more of his humanity for the sake of his masculinity, and who ridicule him when he holds back. The chorus is made up of all the guy's comrades and rivals, his buddies and bosses, his male ancestors and his male cultural heroes--and above all, his father, who may have been a real person in his life, or may have existed only as the myth of the man who got away.

  Frank Pittman

  Father, Real, Hero

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• We have to be realistic about what we can achieve in Afghanistan. The notion that the United States can build a Western-style democracy there is a myth

  Barbara Boxer

  Style, Democracy, United States

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• Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have "really happened,"or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.

  Northrop Frye

  Fall, Together, Special

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.412, University of Toronto Press

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• Plato--who may have understood better what forms the mind of man than do some of our contemporaries who want their children exposed only to "real" people and everyday events--knew what intellectual experience made for true humanity. He suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teachings.

  Bruno Bettelheim

  Education, Plato, Children

  Bruno Bettelheim (1976). “The uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales”, Knopf

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• For the Platonic or Aristotelian philosophy, it is of no importance whether Plato or Aristotle ever lived. For the mystical practice of an Indian, Persian, Chinese, or Neo-Platonic mystic it is a matter of indifference whether Rama, Buddha, Laotse, or Porphyrius are myths or not. The mystic has no personal relation to them. It is not here a question of somebody telling me the truth which of myself I cannot find, but of my finding an access to the depths of the world in the depths of my soul.

  Emil Brunner

  Plato, Philosophy, Practice

  Emil Brunner (1931). “The Word and the World”

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