Marina Warner Quotes

Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards.

If you have any racist friends, it's on you to stop that immediately and let them know why that's not right, or what's wrong with the way they think or just opening their eyes and allowing them to understand what's wrong with their thought process because, to be honest, I mean, we're all human.

Myth-making is absolutely necessary to create the simplified images that people live off.

Every country has its own culture and sensitivities.

National events determine our ideals, as much as our ideals determine national events.

I think it's important for Americans to try to understand each other a little better.

It's like everybody's sitting there and they have some kind of veil over their face, and they look at each other through this veil that makes them see each other through some stereotypical kind of viewpoint. If we're ever gonna collectively begin to grapple with the problems that we have collectively, we're gonna have to move back the veil and deal with each other on a more human level.

American ideals do not require to be changed so much as they require to be understood and applied.

It is important to remember all true change begins at the margins and moves toward the center. This does not make the climate change movement marginal, it makes it muscular, organic, with a true movement toward the center.

But we need more than a broader understanding of what is a good society or a moral and political critique of the existing market fundamentalism engulfing American society, we also need to create new forms of solidarity, new and broad based social movements that move beyond the isolated and fractured politics of the current historical moment.

[James] Baldwin said the real question is not when there will be the first Negro president in this country. The important question is what country he's going to be the president of.

I don't think films in and of themselves create radical change, but I think a film can contribute to people's understanding and deepen their understanding and help contribute to a shift.

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth...

People drift from generation to generation, and the morally unthinkable becomes thinkable as the years move on.

That's what a community is: taking for granted certain assumptions, not having to start from zero every time. This is no longer true.

The conceptions which any nation or individual entertains of the God of its popular worship may be inferred from their own actions and opinions, which are the subjects of their approbation among their fellow-men.

I think there's a lot that the larger society could have been taught or can be taught, but I'm not sure - given how unyielding the larger society has been - that much has been learned.

It's important to begin to even consider whether countries can become something that looks very different because people tend to take their countries for granted.

He who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men.

Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is time to move forward. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.

Movies really have replaced what traditionally were mythologies, that every culture had their mythological beliefs and their collective 'stories.' There is now the possibility for movies to embody that arising new state of consciousness.

Each nation has its own peculiar method of work. Some work through politics, some through social reforms, some through other lines. With us, religion is the only ground along which we can move.

Every culture has their myths that people are aware of and share.

It's not enough to be tolerant...now we're finally moving towards the idea of acceptance.

Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.