Myth Quotes - Page 38

• The question is always the same with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you?

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Dragons, Fantasy

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Tombs of Atuan”, p.102, Simon and Schuster

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• When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Messages, Consciousness, Changing Your Life

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.78, Ultramarine Publishing

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• Myth, legend, and ritual ... function to maintain a status quo. That makes them singularly bad in coping with change, indeed counterproductive, for change is the enemy of myth.

  Elizabeth Janeway

  Change, Enemy, Legends

  Elizabeth Janeway (1981). “Powers of the weak”, William Morrow & Co

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• Mythology is like gravity, inconvenient at times, but necessary for cohesion.

  Elizabeth Janeway

  Cohesion, Gravity, Mythology

  Elizabeth Janeway (1971). “Man's world, woman's place: a study in social mythology”

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• writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences - experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.

  Susan Sontag

  Literature, Makers, Offers

  Susan Sontag's Speech upon being awarded the "Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels" (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt Book Fair, www.tomdispatch.com. October 12, 2003.

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• Legends have always played a powerful role in the making of history. ... Without ever relating facts reliably, yet always expressing their true significance, they offered a truth beyond realities, a remembrance beyond memories.

  Hannah Arendt

  Memories, Powerful, Reality

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Imperialism: Part Two Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism”, p.100, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Here is a myth for you if myths are your pleasure: "There is no more opportunity in this world." Most people held this false belief fifty years ago, the majority agreed with it five years ago, and practically everyone clings to it today. Clearly, this myth will also be the screaming rage in the future. Hang on to this myth, and you are destined to miss great opportunities for the rest of your life.

  Ernie J Zelinski

  Opportunity, Years, People

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• [P]rescientific people... could never guess the nature of physical reality beyond the tiny sphere attainable by unaided common sense. Nothing else ever worked, no exercise from myth, revelation, art, trance, or any other conceivable means; and notwithstanding the emotional satisfaction it gives, mysticism, the strongest prescientific probe in the unknown, has yielded zero.

  E. O. Wilson

  Art, Zero, Mean

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• For some reason there's this myth that creativity - [especially] in terms of creative writing - is a gift you either have, or you don't. So when people first start writing, if they write something that's not very good, or if they try and it's difficult, they go, "Oh, I guess I don't have it." That doesn't seem very fair, you have to try and you have to work at it. If we get scared of one bad poem and quit, that's not doing anybody any good.

  Sarah Kay

  Writing, Creativity, People

  Source: saseye.com

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• Behind every myth lies a truth; beyond every legend is reality, as radiant (sometimes as chilling) as the story itself.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Lying, Reality, Stories

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• Physics has never been a comfortable subject for human psychology. The desire to regard everything outside the human race's purview as insignificant, and everything within that purview as firmly under the control of tribal myth and custom, is as strong today as it was in the time of Galileo.

  Celia Green

  Strong, Science, Race

  Celia Elizabeth Green (1976). “The decline and fall of science”, Hamish Hamilton

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• The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Communism, Communist, Our Time

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “Practicing History: Selected Essays”, p.292, Random House

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• The romantic myth is so strong that it survives the wear and tear of marriage by simply detaching from it and floating up on ahead, and women who are rather fond of the men they married, as well as ones who are not, go through life with a bag packed for the day when the shining knight on a white charger arrives, just in case he does.

  Merle Shain

  Strong, Men, White

  Merle Shain (1973). “Some Men Are More Perfect Than Others”

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• Poetry is one of the essential structures of civilization - carrying myth, ritual, 'tales of the tribe' and the essence of language.

  Diane Wakoski

  Essence, Civilization, Essentials

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• There are six myths about old age: 1. That it's a disease, a disaster. 2. That we are mindless. 3. That we are sexless. 4. That we are useless. 5. That we are powerless. 6. That we are all alike.

  Maggie Kuhn

  Age, Useless, Disease

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• Folklore is a collection of ridiculous notions held by other people, but not by you and me.

  Margaret Halsey

  People, Ridiculous, Notion

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

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• The feelings, myths and prejudices about the Negro American which now seem so valid and real to some of our white contemporaries will take their place on the shelf along with the belief in witches and the notion that the earth is the center of the solar system.  Nobody knows as yet whether the future [of the race situation] is hopeless. All we know is that it can be made hopeless, if enough people choose to consider it so.

  Margaret Halsey

  Real, Race, White

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• I don't think I'm a risk-taker. I don't think any entrepreneur is. I think that's one of those myths of commerce. The new entrepreneur is more values-led: you do what looks risky to other people because that's what your convictions tell you to do. Other companies would say I'm taking risks, but that's my path - it doesn't feel like risk to me.

  Anita Roddick

  Business, Thinking, People

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• Every articulate family ... generates its own stories, explanations and myths to illuminate the differences in temperament and talent among its children, the lines of allegiance and influence between parent and child.

  Elizabeth Fishel

  Family, Children, Differences

  Elizabeth Fishel (1997). “Sisters: Shared Histories, Lifelong Ties”, Red Wheel

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• Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous... I define vulnerability as emotional risk, exposure, uncertainty. It fuels our daily lives.

  Brené Brown

  Emotional, Risk, Fuel

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• as for the possibility of 'having it all,' career and family with no sacrifice to either, that is a myth we would do well to abandon, together with the pernicious notion that a woman who chooses one of the other is somehow deficient.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Sacrifice, Careers, Together

  Sonia Sotomayor (2013). “My Beloved World”, Vintage

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• No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  My Family, Happened, Died

  Wisława Szymborska (1981). “Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems”, p.63, Princeton University Press

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• Men have jobs, while women have Roles: Mother, Wife, Goddess, Temptress, etc. That's probably why it's so hard for women to rewrite the rules. You're not just changing a job description, but an ancient myth. You're revising the Bible, Poetry, Legend and Psychoanalytic Scripture.

  Caryl Rivers

  Mother, Jobs, Men

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• Ritual and myth are like seed crystals of new patterns that can eventually reshape culture around them.

  Starhawk

  Culture, Patterns, Crystals

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• The age-long history of thinking on gravitation, too, was erased from the collective consciousness, and that force somehow became the serendipitous child of Newton's genius. The new attitude is well illustrated by the anecdote of the apple, a legend spread by Voltaire, one of the most active and vehement erasers of the past. ... The need to build the myth of an ex nihilo creation of modern science gave rise to much impassioned rhetoric.

  Lucio Russo

  Children, Attitude, Past

  "The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn". Book by Lucio Russo, 2004.

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