Mythological Beliefs Quotes

I've always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.

The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.

Myths are seldom simple, and never irresponsible.

This evil, this concept, it comes from disappointment, from bitterness! Don't you see? Children of Satan! Children of God! Is this the only question you bring to me, is this the only power that obsesses you, so that you must make us gods and devils yourself when the only power that exists is inside ourselves? How could you believe in these old fantastical lies, these myths, these emblems of the supernatural?

Modernity sees humanity as having ascended from what is inferior to it - life begins in slime and ends in intelligence - whereas traditional cultures see it as descended from its superiors. As the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins put the matter: We are the only people who assume that we have ascended from apes. Everybody else take it for granted that they are descended from gods.

Superstition always inspires littleness, religion grandeur of mind; the superstitious raises beings inferior to himself to deities.

It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one's dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical.

I'm certainly not surprised by the passion of the youth for our myths. Mythology is almost a part of an Indian's DNA.

According to the Asiatics, Cupid's bow is strung with bees which are apt to sting, sometimes fatally, those who meddle with it.

no truth is strong enough to defeat a well-established legend.

Strangely enough, there's this mythology sprouting out that I cannot stop.

North Korea has a very striking mythology there. It is influencing the whole nation.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

I began to believe the fairy tales: You know, how we're all out there looking for our magical missing half.

All doctrines relating to the creation of the world, the government of man by superior beings, and his destiny after death, are conjectures which have been given out as facts, handed down with many adornments by tradition, and accepted by posterity as "revealed religion". They are theories more or less rational which uncivilised men have devised in order to explain the facts of life, and which civilised men believe that they believe.

Naturally, since [the Sumerians] didn't know what caused the flood anymore than we do, they blamed the gods. (That's the advantage of religion. You're never short an explanation for anything.)