Quotes about Mythology | Quote11 - The Quote Provider

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Carl Sagan

Astronomer, Cosmologist, Astrophysicist, Astrobiologist

We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed - and they're, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.

Animals - Creating - Imagination - Inventing - Knowledge - Making - Mythology - Story - World

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Sylvia Plath

Poet, Writer

That is how it stiffens, my vision of that seaside childhood. My father died; we moved inland. Whereon those nine first years of my life sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle - beautiful, inaccessible, obsolete: a fine, white, flying myth.

Children - Death - Movement - Mythology

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C. S. Lewis

Novelist, Scholar, Broadcaster

The value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.

Mythology - Value

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Theologian, Ethicist, Professor

Rationalism belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average person, they follow not reason, but faith. This naïve faith, requires necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on course.

Making - Mythology - Observation - Stupid

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Carl Jung

Psychiatrist, Psychoanalist, Founder of Analytical Psychology

The collective unconscious appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious. We can see this most clearly if we look at the heavenly constellations, whose originally chaotic forms are organized through the projection of images. This explains the influence of the stars as asserted by astrologers. These influences are nothing but unconscious instrospective perceptions of the collective unconscious.

Chaos - Mythology - Organizing - Taking - Whole

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Bertrand Russell

Philosopher, Writer, Activist

Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.

Mythology - Prophecy - Whole

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Carl Jung

Psychiatrist, Psychoanalist, Founder of Analytical Psychology

Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.

Mythology

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Noam Chomsky

Linguist, Philosopher, Cognitive Scientist, Social Critic, Political Activist

Today, aid to Colombia is given under the pretext of a drug war. That's pretty hard to take seriously. Ten years ago, Amnesty International flatly called it a myth.

Drugs - Giving - Mythology

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Orson Welles

Actor, Director, Writer, Producer

I drag my myth around with me.

Mythology

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Barack Obama

Former President of the United States

We have got to dispel this myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage.

Mythology

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Albert Einstein

Theoretical Physicist

I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful." He further added: "No man can read the gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life...Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.

Heroism - Jewish - Man - Mythology

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Hannah Arendt

Philosopher, Political Theorist

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.

Memory - Mythology - Remembering

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Emily Dickinson

Poet

When we think of his lone effort to live and its bleak reward, the mind turns to the myth "for His mercy endureth forever," with confiding revulsion.

Confidence - Mindset - Mythology - Reward

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John Lennon

Singer, Songwriter

I had to really kill off all the religious myths. In the therapy you really feel every painful moment of your life - it's excruciating, you are forced to realise that your pain, the kind that makes you wake up afraid with your heart pounding, is really yours and not the result of somebody up in the sky. It's the result of your parents and your environment.

Feelings - Kindness - Mythology - Parents - Religion

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Margaret Atwood

Poet, Writer, Environmental Activist

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

Greatness - Mythology - Reading

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John F. Kennedy

Former President of the United States

The great enemy of the truth is not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest but the myth persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

Lie - Mythology - Persistence - Persuasion

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J. R. R. Tolkien

Writer, Poet, Philologist

And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.

Loss - Mythology

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Susan Sontag

Writer, Filmmaker, Philosopher, Teacher, Political Activist

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.

Feelings - Making - Mythology

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John Lennon

Singer, Songwriter

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?

Belief - Imagination - Inspiration - Mindset - Mythology

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

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

Mythology - Whole - Winning

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Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosopher, Philologist, Cultural Critic, Scholar

Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.

Creativity - Health - Loss - Mythology

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Bertrand Russell

Philosopher, Writer, Activist

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Accept - Belief - Man - Mythology

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Stephenie Meyer

Novelist, Film Producer

Here in the trees it was much easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed me indoors. Nothing had changed in this forest for thousands of years, and all the myths and legends of a hundred different lands seemed much more likely in this green haze than they had in my clear-cut bedroom. Bella Swan Stephenie Meyer

Absurd - Belief - Change - Embarrassment - Mythology

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Steven Spielberg

Film Producer, Film Director, Screenwriter

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.

Kindness - Mythology - Stereotypes

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Karl Popper

Philosopher, Professor

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.

Beginner - Mythology

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Bertrand Russell

Philosopher, Writer, Activist

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

Atheism - Help - Man - Mythology

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Karl Popper

Philosopher, Professor

Thus science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices.

Accounting - Experimenting - Mythology

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Josh Groban

Singer, Songwriter, Actor, Record Producer

I did not practice hours a day for eighteen years to have my success attributed to a myth.

Mythology

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Howard Zinn

Historian

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.

Execution - Man - Mythology - Rich - Story - Studying

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Ricky Gervais

Comedian, Actor, Director

It’s a strange myth that atheists have nothing to live for. It’s the opposite. We have nothing to die for. We have everything to live for.

Atheism - Death - Mythology

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Joseph Conrad

Writer

Life knows us not and we do not know life—-we don’t know even our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow

Death - Man - Memory - Mythology

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Shimon Peres

Former President of Israel

David Ben-Gurion was a mythic figure, the founding father of Israel and a modern-day prophet, but he was also a real man who stormed through history on human legs. It was my great privilege to know him and work with him for many years.

Greatness - Knowledge - Mythology - Prophecy

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