Cultures produce myths because they satisfy a deep-rooted human need: the need to make sense of life. Myths are appealing because they reduce the complexity of experience, by making things seem simple and absolute; myths...

It is for the good of states that men should be deluded by religion.

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter...

Without the hard we stay too soft, and heaven is reduced to myths like life. Theology aside, it’s plain to see that God forbids we get too comfortable.

The myths are dead. The gods are dead. The ghosts and ghouls and phantoms are dead. There is only the State, and the People.- No, Monsieur Robespierre. There is much more than that.

To animals they were just the weather, just part of everything. But humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories....

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...

The sublime can only be found in the great subjects. Poetry, history and philosophy all have the same object, and a very great object—Man and Nature. Philosophy describes and depicts Nature. Poetry paints and embellishes...

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.

Magic is at the core of myths.

I don’t know these stories as well as they know me, I’ve discovered.

There are a lot of myths out there… and a lot of people think the grass is greener on the other side. But once they do some research or quit and go somewhere else, they...

Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with...

Men are like busses. I mean, you wait for ages and ages, and when one does finally come along you can’t get on. And that bit about them coming in threes, well, that’s just a...

And to think of this great country in danger of being dominated by people ignorant enough to take a few ancient Babylonian legends as the canons of modern culture. Our scientific men are paying for...

We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear.

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.

In ancient times, people weren’t just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with...

Misunderstanding is generally simpler than true understanding, and hence has more potential for popularity.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great...

Aging and the prospect of dying by no means enhance the attractiveness of fictitious comforts to come in paradise, or the veracity of malicious myths about hellfire and damnation. Fear and feeblemindedness cannot be credibly...

We have built up many myths and one of the myths that we have built up is that saturated fat is bad for us and that?s not true.

First, however, I must deal with the matter of Jesus, the so-called savior, who not long ago taught new doctrines and was thought to be a son of God. This savior, I shall attempt to...

What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use...

…Myths aren’t fairy tales or legends—they’re an honest attempt to explain mysteries…

Fiction is written with reality and reality is written with fiction. We can write fiction because there is reality and we can write reality because there is fiction; everything we consider today to be myth...

I can’t admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry,...

Life is a series of events and sensations. Everything else is interpretation. Much is lost in transition – and added in assumption / projection

I have argued elsewhere (Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence [2005]) that we need to treat ethics in biblical texts just as we treat ethics in any other works of ancient literature. It is...

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 going to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real...

Atlantis?’ Jason asked.’That’s a myth,’ Percy said.’Uh…don’t we deal in myths?”No, I mean it’s a MADE-UP myth. Not like, an actual true myth.”So this is why Annabeth is the brains of the operation, huh?

It was generally believed, said Theophilus, that Orpheus learned his music from the birds. His small voice, piping after theirs, filled with all the secret stories of the earth.

History is often made and buttressed by myths and folklore rather than facts.

One of the most dangerous myths surrounding eating disorders is that they are a life sentence.

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...

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning. There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan’s 127 million people...

Many people do simply awful things out of sincere religious belief, not using religion as a cover the way that Saddam Hussein may have done, but really because they believe that this is what God...

The predisposition to religious belief is an ineradicable part of human behavior. Mankind has produced 100,000 religions. It is an illusion to think that scientific humanism and learning will dispel religious belief. Men would rather...

So here is why I write what I do: We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and...

We will go on producing myths, ways of explaining ourselves to ourselves but, like everything else about us, they are in constant transition and we must not fundamentalise any of them.

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”.

The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country...

The pens sharpen – Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions (and most others) are much the same – Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust for women’s bodies.

It is certainly true that all beliefs and all myths are worthy of a respectful hearing. It is not true that all folk beliefs are equally valid – if we’re talking not about an internal...

Your kindness, beauty, and simplicity remind me the stories about angels, and I was told they are just legends and myths.

There are those whose views about religion are not very different from my own, but who nevertheless feel that we should try to damp down the conflict, that we should compromise it. … I respect...

And finally, I’ve always drawn a great deal of moral comfort from Humpty Dumpty. The part I like the best? ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together...

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...

The type of journalism that relies on the reporter’s notion of what does or doesn’t “seem” correct or controversial is self-indulgent and irresponsible. It gives credence to the belief that we can intuit our way...