Myth Quotes - Page 40

• Anyone who thinks they stand apart from society and defies all which govern its existence has less in common with the lone wolf patriot standing up to dystopic forces of oppression - a myth - and more in common with the disease known as cancer - a harsh reality.

  Steven Weber

  Cancer, Reality, Thinking

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The whole thing died in my mind long before the rumpus started. We used to believe the Beatles myth just as much as the public and we were in love with them just the same way. But we were four individuals who eventually recovered our individualities after being submerged in a myth.

  John Lennon

  Music, Believe, Long

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• All artists, they say, are a little mad. This madness is, to a certain extent, a self-created myth designed to keep the generality away from the phenomenally close-knit creative community. Yet, in the world of the artists, the consciously eccentric are always respectful and admiring if those who have the courage to be genuinely a little mad.

  Angela Carter

  Artist, Self, Mad

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• Various kinds of self-forgetting, usually accompanied by illusions and myths, make it possible to live without the intransigent facing of death-in the sense of always thinking about it and what it means for life and the things dear in life-which is characteristic of a serious life.

  Allan Bloom

  Mean, Thinking, Self

  Allan Bloom (2008). “Closing of the American Mind”, p.277, Simon and Schuster

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• What is clear is that the Gospel of Judas has joined the other spectacular discoveries that are exploding the myth of a monolithic Christianity and showing how diverse and fascinating the early Christian movement really was.

  Elaine Pagels

  Christian, Discovery, Movement

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• To accept the story of the Arab destruction of the library of Alexandria, one must explain how it is that so dramatic an event was unmentioned and unnoticed not only in the rich historical literature of medieval Islam, but even in the literatures of the Coptic and other Christian churches, of the Byzantines, of the Jews, or anyone else who might have thought the destruction of a great library worthy of comment. That the story still survives, and is repeated, despite all these objections, is testimony to the enduring power of a myth.

  Bernard Lewis

  Christian, Scary, Historical

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• [M]yths are not invented as stories are. Myths are inspired-they really are. They come from the same realm that dream comes from.

  Joseph Campbell

  Dream, Stories, Inspired

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• The Enlightenment was an attempt to liberate myth and base truth claims on evidence, not just dogma. But when science threw out the church, they threw out the baby with the bath water.

  Ken Wilber

  Baby, Water, Church

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• I feel that my advances in the business world will shatter a lot of white myths about black athletes-and give some pride and hope to a lot of young blacks.

  O. J. Simpson

  Athlete, Pride, White

  O. J. Simpson, Pete Axthelm (1970). “O. J.: the education of a rich rookie”

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• Arnold Rampersad's stunningly revealing biography has, at long last, unveiled-in magisterial prose-the very complex and vulnerable man behind Ralph Ellison's own masks and myths. One of the nation's most brilliant writers emerges as all the more fascinating precisely because he was so very human. Painstakingly researched and compellingly written, Ralph Ellison is a masterwork of the genre of literary biography.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Men, Long, Biographies

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• It is the doctrine of the oligarchy that there is nothing that we hold in common, that the commonwealth is a myth, that it is even a sign of softheadedness and weakness. The oligarchical power feeds on the sense that we are all individuals, struggling on our own, and ennobled by the effort.

  Charlie Pierce

  Struggle, Effort, Weakness

  "I Dream of Common Wealth" by Charles P. Pierce, www.esquire.com. March 29, 2012.

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• Disease is surely one of the ways in which we are tried by life and offered the chance to be heroic. Though few of us will win Olympic gold medals or slay dragons, disease can be the spark or gift that allows many of us to live out our personal myths and become heroes.

  Bernie Siegel

  Hero, Winning, Dragons

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• Myth was regarded as primary; it was concerned with what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence. Myth looked back to the origins of life, to the foundations of culture, and to the deepest levels of the human mind. Myth was not concerned with practical matters, but with meaning. Unless we find some significance in our lives, we mortal men and women fall very easily into despair. The mythos of a society provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives; it directed their attention to the eternal and the universal.

  Karen Armstrong

  Fall, Men, Origin Of Life

  Karen Armstrong (2011). “The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism”, p.14, Ballantine Books

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• I love mythic stuff. I love playing with gods, I love playing with myths. A lot of it has to do with that they're the basic places stories come from. They're the clay that you make the bricks out of.

  Neil Gaiman

  Clay, Stories, Stuff

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. September 28, 2005.

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• We are moving away from myths and toward fantasy role-playing games, away from movies and toward videogames.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Moving, Playing Games, Role Playing

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The "October Revolution" is a myth generated by the winners, the Bolsheviks, and swallowed whole by progressive circles in the West.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Circles, October Revolution, West

  Source: www.independent.co.uk

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• We have the kind of self-made-man myth, which says that super-successful people did it themselves.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Successful, Men, Self

  "Secrets of their success". Interview with Jennifer Reingold, archive.fortune.com. November 19, 2008.

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• Historically speaking all - or very nearly all - scientific theories originate from myths.

  Karl Popper

  Theory, Scientific Theory

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.50, Routledge

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• You know, equality is a myth, and for some reason, everyone accepts the fact that women don't make as much money as men do. I don't understand that. Why do we have to take a backseat?

  Beyonce Knowles

  Men, Facts, Reason

  "Miss Millennium: Beyoncé" by Amy Wallace, www.gq.com. January 10, 2013.

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• Holly Black is the Real Thing: a gifted writer with a solid grounding in what matters. Her stories are dark and splendid blooms rising from roots sunk deep in myth and tradition.

  Ellen Kushner

  Real, Dark, Roots

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• We tend to think of divorced or complicated families as a modern invention, and that is not at all true. You only have to read the Greek myths to see broken homes, widows, divorce, stepchildren, children trying to get along with new parents.

  Rick Riordan

  Children, Divorce, Home

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• I stick closely to the structure of the myths. I may have some fun with the mythology by changing the environment to modern-day, but the structure of the myths, the monsters, the relationships of the gods - none of that is made up.

  Rick Riordan

  Fun, Monsters, May

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• Extended families have never been the norm in America; the highest figure for extended-family households ever recorded in Americanhistory is 20 percent. Contrary to the popular myth that industrialization destroyed "traditional" extended families, this high point occurred between 1850 and 1885, during the most intensive period of early industrialization. Many of these extended families, and most "producing" families of the time, depended on the labor of children; they were held together by dire necessity and sometimes by brute force.

  Stephanie Coontz

  Children, America, Together

  Stephanie Coontz (2016). “The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap”, p.25, Basic Books

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• The poet who speaks out of the deepest instincts of man will be heard. The poet who creates a myth beyond the power of man to realize is gagged at the peril of the group that binds him. He is the true revolutionary: he builds a new world.

  Babette Deutsch

  Men, Speaks Out, Poetry

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• Men do not invent Myths. They only invent fables, and tell lies. True Myths create themselves, and find their expression in the men who serve their purpose.

  Denis Johnston

  Truth, Honesty, Lying

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