Myths Quotes

“Was [Sisyphus] from your province?
'I don't know. I don't know if he's real,' Ky says. 'If he ever existed.'
'Then why tell his story?' I don't understand, and for a second I feel betrayed. Why did Ky tell me about this person and make me feel empathy for him when there's no proof that he ever lived at all?
Ky pauses for a moment before he answers, ...'Even if he didn't live his story, enough of us have lived lives just like it. So it's true anyway.”
― Ally Condie, Matched

“When it comes to the Civil War, all of our popular understanding, our popular history and culture, our great films, the subtext of our arguments are in defiance of its painful truths. It is not a mistake that Gone with the Wind is one of the most read works of American literature or that The Birth of a Nation is the most revered touchstone of all American film. Both emerge from a need for palliatives and painkillers, an escape from the truth of those five short years in which 750,000 American soldiers were killed, more than all American soldiers killed in all other American wars combined, in a war declared for the cause of expanding "African slavery." That war was inaugurated not reluctantly, but lustily, by men who believed property in humans to be the cornerstone of civilization, to be an edict of God, and so delivered their own children to his maw. And when that war was done, the now-defeated God lived on, honored through the human sacrifice of lynching and racist pogroms. The history breaks the myth. And so the history is ignored, and fictions are weaved into our art and politics that dress villainy in martyrdom and transform banditry into chivalry, and so strong are these fictions that their emblem, the stars and bars, darkens front porches and state capitol buildings across the land to this day.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“Does progress mean that we dissolve our ancient myths? If we forget our legends, I fear that we shall close an important door to the imagination”
― James Christensen

“It's what's known as an origin myth.
What happened to me? That's no myth.”
― Meg Cabot, Abandon

“Can you be sure that others have not come before you and destroyed the pristine state of the native myth? Can you be sure that the natives are not humoring you or pulling your leg? Bronislaw Malinowski thought he had discovered a people in the Trobriant Islands who had not worked out the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth. When asked how children were conceived, they supplied him with an elaborate mythic structure prominently featuring celestial intervention. Amazed, Malinowski objected that was not how it was done at all, and supplied them instead with the version so popular in the West today – including a nine-month gestation period. “Impossible,” replied the Melanesians. “Do you not see that woman over there with her six-month-old child? Her husband has been on an extended voyage to another island for two years.” Is it more likely that the Melanesians were ignorant of the begetting of children or that they were gently chiding Malinowski? If some peculiar-looking stranger came into my town and asked ME where babies came from, I’d certainly be tempted to tell him about storks and cabbages. Prescientific people are people. Individually they are as clever as we are.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Tú, pájaro, vivirás en los árboles y volarás por los aires, alcanzarás la región de las nubes, rozarás la transparencia del cielo y no tendrás miedo de caer.”
― Popol Vuh

“And in "Elbow Room" the cast sings the glories of westward expansion in the United States, which involved the murder of native peoples and the violent conquest of half of Mexico. Among the lines in the song is one that intones, "There were plenty of fights / To win land right / But the West was meant to be / It was our Manifest Destiny?" Let it suffice to say that happily belting out a tune in which one merrily praises genocide is always easier for those whose ancestors weren't on the receiving end of the deal.”
― Tim Wise, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son

“Aber sie halten es für eine Legende!'
'Weil sie es dafür halten wollen. Vielleicht würden sich manche Märchen und Mythen als wahr herausstellen, wenn nur jemand den Mut aufbrächte, in einem Brunnen nach einer goldenen Kugel zu suchen oder die Dornenhecke vor einem Schloss zu zerschneiden.”
― Kai Meyer, Die Fließende Königin

“Myths tell us what those like us have done, can do, should do. Without myths to lead the way, we hesitate to leap forward. Listen to the wrong myths, and we might even go back a few steps.”
― N.K. Jemisin

“I just wish this social institution [religion] wasn't based on what appears to me to be a monumental hoax built on an accumulation of customs and myths directed toward proving something that isn't true.”
― Andy Rooney, Sincerely, Andy Rooney

“I don't know these stories as well as they know me, I've discovered.”
― Joan Gould

“A myth... is a metaphor for a mystery beyond human comprehension. It is a comparison that helps us understand, by analogy, some aspect of our mysterious selves. A myth, in this way of thinking, is not an untruth but a way of reaching a profound truth.”
― Christopher Vogler, The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 2nd Edition

“Chiron looked surprised. “I thought that would be obvious enough. The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“The spirituality of the sun was, for thousands of years, the dominant religion of the ancient world. If you trace it far back enough, its origin stretches well beyond recorded history into the most ancient sacred texts, and from there, into the most ancient of myths and legends.”
― Belsebuub

“Myths are what remain once the history of an event has been forgotten or lost to time. Myths are like the memory of one’s first crush; the pain and longing one felt at that time is forgotten, but the warmth and sweetness of romance lives on, probably even magnified, larger in the imagination than it was in reality.”
― Shatrujeet Nath

“I would like to believe in the myth that we grow wiser with age. In a sense my disbelief is wisdom. Those of a middle generation, if charitable or sentimental, subscribe to the wisdom myth, while the callous see us as dispensable objects, like broken furniture or dead flowers. For the young we scarcely exist unless we are unavoidable members of the same family, farting, slobbering, perpetually mislaying teeth and bifocals.”
― Patrick White, Three Uneasy Pieces

“Humans are a story telling species. Throughout history we have told stories to each other and ourselves as one of the ways to understand the world around us. Every culture has its creation myth for how the universe came to be, but the stories do not stop at the big picture view; other stories discuss every aspect of the world around us. We humans are chatterboxes and we just can't resist telling a story about just about everything.

However compelling and entertaining these stories may be, they fall short of being explanations because in the end all they are is stories. For every story you can tell a different variation, or a different ending, without giving reason to choose between them. If you are skeptical or try to test the veracity of these stories you'll typically find most such stories wanting. One approach to this is forbid skeptical inquiry, branding it as heresy. This meme is so compelling that it was independently developed by cultures around the globes; it is the origin of religion—a set of stories about the world that must be accepted on faith, and never questioned.”
― Nathan Myhrvold

“Sólo se sentía la tranquilidad sorda de las aguas, las cuales parecía que se despeñaban en el abismo.”
― Popol Vuh

“Vampires were myths, childhood stories– as were werewolves, mermaids and dragons. I believed none of it.”
― Ashley Madau

“facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter,' as my friend the late Maya Deren once phrased the mystery.”
― Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

“The she-monster is hardly a new phenomenon. The idea of a female untamed nature which must be leashed or else will wreak havoc closely reflects mythological heroes’ struggles against monsters. Greek myth alone offers a host - of Ceres, Harpies, Sirens, Moirae. Associated with fate and death in various ways, they move swiftly, sometimes on wings; birds of prey are their closest kin - the Greeks didn’t know about dinosaurs - and they seize as in the word raptor. But seizure also describes the effect of the passions on the body; inner forces, looser, madness, arte, folly, personified in Homer and the tragedies as feminine, snatch and grab the interior of the human creature and take possession.”
― Marina Warner, Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time: The Reith Lectures 1994

“En el silencio de las tinieblas vivían los dioses que se dicen: Tepeu, Gucumatz y Hurakán, cuyos nombres guardan los secretos de la creación, de la existencia y de la muerte, de la tierra y de los seres que la habitan.”
― Popol Vuh

“Pensaron cómo harían brotar la luz, la cual recibiría alimento de eternidad. La luz se hizo entonces en el seno de lo increado. Contemplaron así la naturaleza original de la vida que está en la entraña de lo desconocido.”
― Popol Vuh

“Y todavía los que no murieron bajo las chozas ni se rajaron los huesos bajo los árboles ni se desangraron bajo las cuevas, ciegos de miedo y de ira acabaron despedazándose entre sí. Los pocos que no sufrieron quebranto, como recuerdo de la simpleza de sus corazones, se transformaron en monos.”
― Popol Vuh

“Religious sentiments are many a times much above reality. All are aware of reality but blinded by faith and faith has always led to many a myths become reality".”
― Dr. Amit Abraham

“Por no haber sabido hablar conforme a lo ordenado, tendréis distinto modo de vivir y diversa comida. No viviréis ya en comunión plácida; cada cual huirá de su semejante, temeroso de su inquina y de su hambre, y buscará lugar que oculte su torpeza y su miedo.”
― Popol Vuh

“When these early people looked at a stone, they did not see an inert, unpromising rock. It embodied strength, permanence, solidity and an absolute mode of being that was quite different from the vulnerable human state. Its very otherness made it holy.”
― Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth

“Our existence isn't always rooted in logic, but in the myths we've dared to believe.”
― Monika Ajay Kaul

“In Greek myth, Circe was a sorceress and a goddess born of the sun god Helios and the ocean nymph Perse. And a powerful sorceress she was, so adept at incantations that she could morph men into animals to keep them enslaved to her on her island.”
― The Editors of National Geographic, National Geographic The History of Witchcraft

“Legends and mythology have always played a vital role in shaping the identity and cultural heritage of civilizations. The Klassikan Empire is no exception, as it is steeped in a rich tapestry of mythical tales and folklore that have been passed down through generations.”
― Don Santo, Klassik Era: The Genesis