Myth Quotes - Page 4

• Stumbling upon the next great invention in an 'ah-ha!' moment is a myth.

  James Dyson

  Great Inventions, Next, Moments

  "No innovator's dilemma here: in praise of failure" by James Dyson, www.wired.com. April 8, 2011.

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  I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?

  John Lennon

  Inspirational, Life, Faith

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• This is all I ever wanted - to help students and artists see myth as a reflection of the one sublime adventure of life, and then to breathe new life into it.

  Joseph Campbell

  Adventure, Reflection, Artist

  Joseph Campbell, Phil Cousineau, Stuart L. Brown (1990). “The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work”, p.12, New World Library

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• Science and Technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconscious with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Dream, Memories, Revenge

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• What the myths say, is that you have to be the hero of your own life. You're the one who has to take charge of who you are, you're the one who has to take control. And also, you're the one who can bring something to the community.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Hero, Healing, Community

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• A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they're better than anyone else on earth - and that's a myth.

  Ernest Gaines

  Lying, Believe, White

  Ernest J. Gaines (2015). “A Lesson Before Dying”, p.189, Serpent's Tail

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• If somebody harbours delusions, I think that should disqualify them from office, regardless whether the delusions are religious. Letting someone who thinks the god Jehovah will bail him out serve in public office is like letting a man who believes in Santa Claus run a Toys 'R Us.
  The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

  John F. Kennedy

  Running, Religious, Lying

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• Is it not grotesque when the representatives of an antiquated myth-sorcery, who believes in trinity, angels, devils, hell, virgin-birth, bodily Ascension, making of water into wine, wine to blood, - when they want to impress us with their "science"?

  Karlheinz Deschner

  Atheist, Believe, Angel

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• The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.

  Thomas Sowell

  Political, Unions, Corporations

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “The Thomas Sowell Reader”, p.71, Basic Books

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• The myth of unending consumption has taken the place of the belief in life everlasting.

  Ivan Illich

  Taken, Belief, Unending

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• If you read folklore and mythology, any kind of myths, any kind of tall tales, running is always associated with freedom and vitality and youthfulness and eternal vigor. It's only in our lifetime that running has become associated with fear and pain.

  Christopher McDougall

  Running, Pain, Motivation

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• To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.

  Anne Carson

  Past, Ends

  "Red Doc>". Book by Anne Carson, statement on a jacket copy, therumpus.net. 2013.

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• The writer's function is to prevent myths turning into allegories.

  Michel Tournier

  Function, Allegory

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• Our powerful hunger for myth is a hunger for community. The person without a myth is a person without a home...To be a member of one's community is to share in its myths.

  Rollo May

  Powerful, Home, Community

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• But myth is something else than an explanation of the world, of history, and of destiny. Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence. Hence to demythologize is to interpret myth, that is, to relate the objective representations of the myth to the self-understanding which is both shown and concealed in it.

  Paul Ricoeur

  Destiny, Men, Self

  Paul Ricoeur (1974). “The Conflict of Interpretations”, p.391, Northwestern University Press

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• Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos.

  Rollo May

  Powerful, Speaks Out, Order

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• Why are so many of us enspelled by myths and folk stories in this modern age? Why do we continue to tell the same old tales, over and over again? I think it's because these stories are not just fantasy. They're about real life. We've all encountered wicked wolves, found fairy godmothers, and faced trial by fire. We've all set off into unknown woods at one point in life or another. We've all had to learn to tell friend from foe and to be kind to crones by the side of the road. . . .

  Terri Windling

  Real, Thinking, Fire

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• The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply can’t be spoken in words alone. At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.

  Alan Garner

  Jobs, Stories, Levels

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• All the great legends are Templates for human behavior. I would define a myth as a story that has survived.

  John Boorman

  Stories, Legends, Behavior

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• That shoreline where the island of knowing meets the unfathomable sea of our own being is the landscape of myth.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Islands, Sea, Knowing

  William Irwin Thompson (1996). “The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture”, p.87, Palgrave Macmillan

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• It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

  Hannes Alfven

  Years, Infinite Time, Twenties

  "The World & I", Volume 3, Issues 5-6, May 1988.

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• As a child I became a confirmed believer in the ancient gods simply because as between the reality of fact and the reality f myth, I chose myth...Myth is the truth of fact, not fact the truth of myth.

  Kathleen Raine

  Children, Reality, Facts

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• We still like to make up stories, just as our ancestors did, which use personification to explain the great forces of our existence. Such stories, which explain how the world began or where the sun goes when it sets, we call myths. Mythology is a natural product of the symbolizing mind; poets, when not making up myths of their own, are still commanding ancient ones.

  John Frederick Nims

  Mind, Sun, Stories

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• Art -- the fresh feeling, new harmony, the transforming magic which by means of myth brings back the scattered distracted soul from its modern chaos -- art, not politics, is the remedy.

  Saul Bellow

  Art, Mean, Soul

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• When you look at that nature world it becomes an icon, it becomes a holy picture that speaks of the origins of the world. Almost every mythology sees the origins of life coming out of water. And, curiously, that's true. It's amusing that the origin of life out of water is in myths and then again, finally, in science, we find the same thing. It's exactly so.

  Joseph Campbell

  Rain, Origin Of Life, Icons

  Joseph Campbell, Phil Cousineau, Stuart L. Brown (1990). “The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work”, p.10, New World Library

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