Creation Myths Quotes

The unfolding through time of all things from one is the simple message, finally, of every one of the creation myths reproduced in the pages of these volumes-including that of our contemporary biological view, which becomes an effective mythic image the moment we recognize its own inner mystery. By the same magic, every god that is dead can be conjured again to life, as any fragment of rock from a hillside, set respectfully in a garden, will arrest the eye. ~ Joseph Campbell

A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded - such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mischief, his miracles and suffering, etc. When he had finished an Indian orator stood up to thank him.

'What you have told us,' says he, 'is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far to tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours.

'In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on, and if their hunting was unsuccessful they were starving. Two of our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to boil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains.

'They said to each other, "It is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling venison and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her." They presented her with the tongue; she was pleased with the taste of it and said: "Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you will find something that will be of great benefit i ~ Benjamin Franklin

The image of the Serpent, because of its association with life, rejuvenation, fertility, and regeneration, was a symbol of immortality. The coiled Serpent with its tail in its mouth was a circle of infinitude indicating omnipotence and omniscience. The Serpent, depicted in several successive rings, represented cyclical evolution and reincarnation. In ancient philosophy or mythological systems, creation and wisdom were closely bound together, and the Serpent was a potent symbol of both. It is in this capacity that the Serpent appears in the Babylonian and Sumerian mythologies, which contain elements akin to the Genesis story. The Serpent has the power to bestow immortality but also has the power to cheat humankind. In many of the ancient Near Eastern stories - for instance, the Gilgamesh Epic and myth of Adapa - the Serpent holds out the promise of immortality but then cheats man at the last minute. ~ Mary Condren

'Sanctus' deals with creation myths in every culture. It fascinates me that all cultures, evolving independently, have similar models of mankind's origins, of a Greater Being, of the flood, and so on. It's amazing how they crop up time and time again. ~ Simon Toyne

Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have "really happened,"or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths. ~ Northrop Frye

If the students were taught about shuttle flights, plate tectonics and submarine volcanoes, they were also immersed in the traditional myths of their culture - the ancient story, for example, of how the island of Pohnpei had been built under the direction of a mystical octopus, Lidakika. (I was fascinated by this, for it was the only cephalopod creation myth I had ever heard. ~ Oliver Sacks

The power of organized religions is based upon their contribution to social order and personal security, not to the search for truth. The goal of religions is submission to the will and common good of the tribe. The illogic of religions is not a weakness in them, but their essential strength. Acceptance of the bizarre creation myths binds the members together. Among ~ Edward O. Wilson

Computers rely on the one and the zero to represent all things. This distinction between something and nothing - this pivotal separation between being and nonbeing - is quite fundamental and underlies many Creation myths. ~ Neal Stephenson

According to Eliade, the shamanic ladder is the earliest version of the idea of an axis of the world, which connects the different levels of the cosmos, and is found in numerous creation myths in the form of a tree. ~ Jeremy Narby

In creation myths, a god shapes mud or clay into living form, much like a potter throws a pot or a sculptor reveals the statue within a block of marble. But a writer has to create his own clay or stone before he can begin shaping life from it. ~ Stuart Dybek

We are not perfect. What god is Examine yours. According to your mythos he was so disappointed with his initial efforts creating your race that he tried again. At least we imprisoned our mistakes. Your god permits his to roam free. At a mere few thousand years old your creation myths are far more absurd than ours. ~ Karen Marie Moning

In a great number of the cosmogonic myths the world is said to have developed from a great water, which was the prime matter. In many cases, as for instance in an Indian myth, this prime matter is indicated as a solution, out of which the solid earth crystallized out. ~ Svante Arrhenius

Creation myths need a devil ~ Elliot Shrage

By asseting the creation myth, in which God is a man over ealier creation myths in which God was viewed as a woman, men hoped to prove that the position of supremacy that they had assumed was Divine Law. ~ Frederick Lenz

Myths of the heroes are cosmic creation myths in microcosm. They depict, in no matter how subtle variation, the eternal battle we wage to release the creative energies within ourselves and in the world. ~ Dorothy Norman

God creates the sky as a liturgical calendar. Sun, moon, and stars exist to indicate the appointed times. Created time is liturgical, and Israel's time ticks and tocks along with the movements of the universe. ~ Peter Leithart

There are two kinds of creation myths: those where life arises out of the mud, and those where life falls from the sky. In this creation myth, computers arose from the mud, and code fell from the sky. ~ George Dyson

If historians don't tell stories at the scales of creation myths, someone else will. ~ David Christian

I wonder now about Demeter and Persephone. Maybe Persephone was glad to run off with the king of death to his underground realm, maybe it was the only way she could break away from her mother, maybe Demeter was a bad parent the way Lear was a bad parent, denying nature, including the nature of children to leave their parents. Maybe Persephone thought Hades was the infinitely cool older man who held the knowledge she sought, maybe she loved the darkness, the six months of winter, the sharp taste of pomegranates, the freedom from her mother, maybe she knew that to be truly alive death had to be part of the picture just as winter must. It was as the queen of hell that she became an adult and came into power. Hades's realm is called the underworld, and so are the urban realms of everything outside the law. And as in Hopi creation myths, where humans and other beings emerge from underground, so it's from the underground that culture emerges in this civilization. ~ Rebecca Solnit

I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill. ~ Bill Gates

As a science fiction writer who began as a fan, I do not use my fiction as a disguised way to criticize the reality of the present. I feel that the greatest appeal of science fiction is the creation of numerous imaginary worlds outside of reality. I've always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights and novelists, but told by science. The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only, these wonderful stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read.

The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang. The three-billion-year history of life's evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. There is also the poetic vision of space and time in relativity, the weird subatomic world of quantum mechanics … these wondrous stories of science all possess an irresistible attraction. Through the medium of science fiction, I seek only to create my own worlds using the power of imagination, and to make known the poetry of Nature in those worlds, to tell the romantic legends that have unfolded between Man and Universe. ~ Liu Cixin

I'm aware that couples tend to embellish 'how we met' folklore with all kinds of detail and significance. We shape and sentimentalise these first encounters into creation myths to reassure ourselves and our offspring that it was somehow 'meant to be'. ~ David Nicholls

Maps of Time attempts to assemble a coherent and accessible account of origins, a modern creation myth. ~ David Christian

God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation. ~ Francis Bacon

Let us protect Christ in our lives, so that we can protect others, so that we can protect creation! ~ Pope Francis

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Poetry remakes and prolongs language; every poetic language begins by being a secret language, that is, the creation of a personal universe, of a completely closed world. The purest poetic act seems to re-create language from an inner experience that … reveals the essence of things. ~ Mircea Eliade

The precise instant of creation is when you choose the subject. (meaning that the essential thing occurs at the moment when he, the photographer, meets the reality he wishes to capture. ~ Brassai

The myth of Oedipus . . . arouses powerful intellectual and emotional reactions in the adult-so much so, that it may provide a cathartic experience, as Aristotle taught all tragedy does. [A reader] may wonder why he is so deeply moved; and in responding to what he observes as his emotional reaction, ruminating about the mythical events and what these mean to him, a person may come to clarify his thoughts and feelings. With this, certain inner tensions which are the consequence of events long past may be relieved; previously unconscious material can then enter one's awareness and become accessible for conscious working through. This can happen if the observer is deeply moved emotionally by the myth, and at the sametime strongly motivated intellectually to understand it. ~ Bruno Bettelheim

Creation, by its very nature, is an exercise in savage prejudices and uncommon bigotries. ~ John Zande

If God did not reveal himself with word-by-word
precision, then He has placed the revelation of
truth into the incompetent hands of fallen man.
That would prove hopelessly imbecilic. He who
revealed Himself with exactness in "natural" creation
chose the precise words, sentences and paragraphs to compile one Book in which we have His perfect Word. ~ Ron Susek

All I ever aim to do is to put the Development hypothesis in the same coach as the creation one. It will only be a question of who is to ride outside & who in after all. ~ Joseph Dalton Hooker

Metaphysical rebellion is the movement by which man protests against his condition and against the
whole of creation. It is metaphysical because it contests the ends of man and of creation. The slave
protests against the condition in which he finds himself within his state of slavery; the metaphysical rebel
protests against the condition in which he finds himself as a man. The rebel slave affirms that there is
something in him that will not tolerate the manner in which his master treats him; the metaphysical rebel
declares that he is frustrated by the universe. For both of them, it is not only a question of pure and simple
negation. In both cases, in fact, we find a value judgment in the name of which the rebel refuses to
approve the condition in which he finds himself. ~ Albert Camus

The Yankee is one who, if he once gets his teeth set on a thing, all creation can't make him let go. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If I'm going to be in the right relationship with God, I should treat the things he has made in the same way he treats them. ~ Francis Schaeffer

The sole constitutional office of language being to express our ideas and sentiments, it becomes more and more perfect and useful, the more effectually it subserves this sole end of its creation. ~ Orson Squire Fowler

There is nothing in creation that does not grow more distant with the force of a push. ~ Andrew Fincham

The child will leave the nest. The best paint job will crack. The best play will become boring. The best work will grow tedious. The best art will lose meaning. The greatest creation will decay. Behind all this, lies my true self. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

We need good liturgies, and we need natural ones; we need a life neither patternless nor over patterned, if the city is to be built. And I think the root of it all is caring. Not that that will turn the trick all by itself, but that we can produce nothing good without it. True liturgies take things for what they really are, and offer them up in loving delight. Adam naming the animals is instituting the first of all the liturgies; speech, by which man the priest of creation picks up each of the world's pieces and by his wonder bears it into the dance. "By George," he says, "there's an elephant in my garden; isn't that something!" Adam has been at work a long time; civilization is the fruit of his priestly labors. Culture is the liturgy of nature as it is offered up by man. But culture can come only from caring enough about things to want them really to be themselves - to want the poem to scan perfectly, the song to be genuinely melodic, the basketball actually to drop through the middle of the hoop, the edge of the board to be utterly straight, the pastry to be really flaky. Few of us have very many great things to care about, but we all have plenty of small ones; and that's enough for the dance. It is precisely through the things we put on the table, and the liturgies we form around it, that the city is built, caring is more than half the work. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

Complete non-violence is complete absence of ill-will against all that lives. It therefore embraces even sub-human life, not excluding noxious insects and beasts. They have not been created to feed our destructive propensities. If we only knew the mind of the Creator, we should find their proper place in His creation. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Muse, We are servants of the Mystery. We were put here on earth to act as agents of the Infinite, to bring into existence that which is not yet, but which will be, through us. Every breath we take, every heartbeat, every evolution of every cell comes from God and is sustained by God every second, just as every creation, invention, every bar of music or line of verse, every thought, vision, fantasy, every dumb-ass flop and stroke of genius comes from that infinite intelligence that created us and the universe in all its dimensions, out of the Void, the field of infinite potential, primal chaos, the Muse. To acknowledge that reality, to efface all ego, to let the work come through us and give it back freely to its source, that, in my opinion, is as true to reality as it gets. ~ Steven Pressfield

In the quiet moments of your day, what do you think and do? When you are with your Self and no one else, how does life proceed for you? Who are you when you are alone? Self-creation is a Holy Experience. It is sacred. It is you, deciding Who You Are. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

Unable and crippled I am
As I gaze into the vastness
The vastness that harbors your praise
And glories of the best of creation ...
If I tried to spell..
A drop of ink from your love
Ma quill would burn in shame
for your love match no words ... ya rasoolullah! ~ Anila Aboo

They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Sin is man looking for love in all the wrong places. Reflections of God in creation create wonder, but not the satisfaction we really want. ~ Steve DeWitt

Any plan of administration which contemplates a concentrating of responsibility is open to the dangers which follow the creation of a bureaucracy. ~ Arthur Capper

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross. ~ Hermann Hesse

Nature is not something to be fought, conquered and changed according to any human whims. To some extent, of course, it has to be used. But what man should seek in regard to nature is not a complete domination but a modus vivendi - that is, a manner of living together, a coming to terms with something that was here before our time and will be here after it. The important corollary of this doctrine, it seems to me, is that man is not the lord of creation, with an omnipotent will, but a part of creation, with limitations, who ought to observe a decent humility in the face of the inscrutable. ~ Richard M. Weaver

19For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. ~ Anonymous

The illusion is we are only physical. ~ Vanna Bonta

I want to spend my time between the creation of ideas and the creation of things. ~ Theaster Gates

Polly was finding the song more and more interesting because she thought she was beginning to see the connection between the music and the things that were happening. When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away she felt that they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lion had sung a second before. And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction. Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quite certain that all the things were coming (as she said) "out of the Lion's head." When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up: when you looked round you, you saw them. This was so exciting that she had no time to be afraid. ~ C.S. Lewis

Art is a creation of a higher order than a copy of nature which is governed by chance ... By the elimination of all muddy colors, by the exclusive use of optical mixture of pure colors, by a methodical divisionism and a strict observation of the scientific theory of colors, the neo-impressionists insures a maximum of luminosity, of color intensity, and of harmony- a result that has never yet been obtained. ~ Paul Signac

But Hannah's friend didn't understand the volatile balancing act between art and sanity, that the act of creation was like walking a tightrope during an earthquake. She didn't understand Hannah's stupid need for validation, or that the size of the audience increased the stakes and multiplied the fear. She didn't understand that creativity was dangerous, that, yes, there were some people who could stand before a canvas, paint a sunset that would bring the world to its knees, and return to their loved ones as a complete person who didn't hurt, didn't cry, didn't spill blood to appease the host of fickle muses. But Hannah did. Hannah's best ideas - sometimes her only ideas - were buried beneath the skin. ~ Jake Vander Ark

This illustrates the working of all false religions. They originate in man's desire to exalt himself above God, but they result in degrading man [287] below the brute. Every religion that wars against the sovereignty of God defrauds man of the glory which was his at the creation, and which is to be restored to him in Christ. Every false religion teaches its adherents to be careless of human needs, sufferings, and rights. The gospel places a high value upon humanity as the purchase of the blood of Christ, and it teaches a tender regard for the wants and woes of man. The Lord says, "I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir." Isaiah 13:12. When ~ Ellen G. White

They have no craving for truth as a transcendental reality. Indeed, the concept has no place in their values. Truth to the Pirahãs is catching a fish, rowing a canoe, laughing with your children, loving your brother, dying of malaria. Does this make them more primitive? Many anthropologists have suggested so, which is why they are so concerned about finding out the Pirahãs notions about God, the world, and creation.

But there is an interesting alternative to think about things. Perhaps it is their presence of these concerns that makes a culture more primitive, and their absense that renders a culture more sophisticated. If that is true, the Pirahãs are a very sophisticated people. Does this sound far-fetched? Let's ask ourselves if it is more sophisticated to look at the universe with worry, concern, and a believe that we can understand it all, or to enjoy life as it comes, recognizing the likely futility of looking for truth or God? ~ Daniel L. Everett

Myths aren't fairy tales or legends - they're an honest attempt to explain mysteries ... ~ John Geddes

Society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good and noble in a human being. This double standard of morality has played no little part in the creation and perpetuation of prostitution. It involves the keeping of the young in absolute ignorance on sex matters, which alleged "innocence," together with an overwrought and stifled sex nature, helps to bring about a state of affairs that our Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent. ~ Emma Goldman

The poet Mary Oliver did this in one of her poems, brazenly asking, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" If you're afraid you've come to this question too late, you are wrong. Ask your Stargazer self. It will tell you what my fallen-noble friend Marianna told me in one of my darker hours: that the world is re-created in every instant of time, and this moment is always your life's beginning. No matter how many years have been stolen from you by your own ignorance, by cruel fate, or by the acts of others, you have a clean, broad slate before you. In this instant - this one now - you can begin steering by starlight, and if you do, the rest of creation will conspire to guide, teach, and help you. ~ Martha N. Beck

They talk about myths: the myth that links testosterone to libido, for example, in both men and women. If the myth were true, then these women should have no sex drive; they can't, after all, respond to the testosterone their bodies produce. Some sex researchers have said as much about AIS patients - that they're frigid, uninterested, dead in bed. The women themselves come close to spitting in rage at that sort of talk. Whether or not they manage to inflate their vaginas sufficiently to have intercourse, their erotic nature remains intact. They fantasize about sex. They are orgasmic. They lust when there is somebody worth lusting after. ~ Natalie Angier