National Myth Quotes

There is a segment of the American population that has been excluded from the national myth, and that should be redressed. ~ Edward Zwick

For the house of Dunraven, the ravens represented a spiritual claim to the Tower for the Celtic, especially the Welsh, people. For the English, the ravens represented the colorful savagery of their ancestors, which, however, testified to the exalted state of civilization they had since achieved. The national sagas of the Welsh and English gradually blended in tall tales told to tourists by Yeoman Warders, to eventually create a national myth. The romanticized past of Wales, predicated on survival, was fused with that of England, predicated on progress and conquest, to create a legend of Britain. ~ Boria Sax

America gave the world the notion of the melting pot - an alchemical cooking device wherein diverse ethnic and religious groups voluntarily mix together, producing a new, American identity. And while critics may argue that the melting pot is a national myth, it has tenaciously informed the America's collective imagination. ~ Ivan Krastev

When western books are set in the present, critics seldom call them westerns: the national myth allows the West only a past. ~ Gerald W. Haslam

When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children ... I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic ~ Richard Dawkins

Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx-first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother. ~ Ronald Reagan

In our island myth this was the prescribed end of marriages like mine: the wife goes off with someone from the Cercle Sportif, outside whose gates at night the willingly betrayed husband waits in his motorcar. The circumstances were slightly. ~ V.S. Naipaul

Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade and to give men their freedom. Let them do what they are best at. While we scrawl interoffice memos and direct national or extranational affairs, men could spend all their time inventing wheels, peering at stars, composing poems, carving statues, exploring continents
discovering, reforming, or crying out in a sacramental wilderness. Efficiency would probably increase, and no one would have to worry so much about the Gaza Strip or an election. ~ Phyllis McGinley

The merging of characteristics between different species creates a very powerful language, one that I love to explore through my art, enabling me to tap into the unconscious. ~ Virginia Lee

The Castus had become a myth to most, a shadow, but Thomas knew that every rumor was rooted in truth. ~ Jessica Fortunato

People pushing the idea that everyone can live to be 100 are perpetuating a myth that goes all the way back to the Bible. ~ S. Jay Olshansky

In many parts of the Bible Belt, the divorce rate was discovered to be roughly 50 percent above the national average. ~ Ronald J. Sider

The church has to show the way of freedom to the nation ~ Sunday Adelaja

Behind my office, to the south-east, was Police Headquarters, and I imagined all the good hard work that was being done there to crack down on Berlin's crime. Villainies like speaking disrespectfully of the Führer, displaying a 'Sold Out' sign in your butcher's shop window, not giving the Hitler Salute, and homosexuality. That was Berlin under the National Socialist Government: a big, haunted house with dark corners, gloomy staircases, sinister cellars, locked rooms and a whole attic full of poltergeists on the loose, throwing books, banging doors, breaking glass, shouting in the night and generally scaring the owners so badly that there were times when they were ready to sell up and get out. But most of the time they just stopped up their ears, covered their blackened eyes and tried to pretend that there was nothing wrong. Cowed with fear, they spoke very little, ignoring the carpet moving underneath their feet, and their laughter was the thin, nervous kind that always accompanies the boss's little joke. ~ Philip Kerr

Well, no American wants to in any way hurt our capabilities to national defense, but that doesn't mean an unlimited amount of money, and a blank check for anything they want at any time, for any purpose. Not at all. ~ Chuck Hagel

The Chinese said of themselves several thousand years ago: China is a sea that salts all the waters that flow into it. Theres another Chinese saying about their country which is much more modernit dates only from the fourth century. This is the saying: The tail of China is large and will not be wagged. I like that one. The British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails. It is due to the working of these important forces that I have the honour to be addressing you at this moment. ~ Winston Churchill

In the most important sense a creationist is a person who believes in creation, and that includes people who believe that Genesis is a myth and that creation involved a process called evolution and consumed billions of years. ~ Phillip E. Johnson

I am never bothered by normal people; it is the bull***tter in the "intellectual" profession who bothers me. Seeing the psychologist Steven Pinker making pronouncements about things intellectual has a similar effect to encountering a drive-in Burger King while hiking in the middle of a national park. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

To the best of my knowledge, when I became national secretary and, indeed, Victorian secretary, the - my predecessors in the union had detected wrong activities, activities which aren't in the best traditions of the AWU or, indeed, trade unionism. ~ Bill Shorten

From the safety and comfort of rarefied zip codes, open-border theorists tutor the little people in the positive economic effects on productivity and economic growth of high population density. But regular folks don't have to travel to Cairo or Karachi to discover that this urban theory is an urban myth. ~ Ilana Mercer

Slavery happened. That flag stands for segregation. We have monuments to Civil War generals and slave owners, as well as preserved plantations. But we have only one slavery museum, and that was built by a private citizen. We have no national or federal slavery museum. There is no government-funded slavery museum. A proposal to put one in Virginia came through in 2001 and went unfunded and failed. Another one in Richmond reached a similar fate. This is absolutely shameful. ~ Trae Crowder

The myth of the "liberal elite" strategically frames liberal values - environmentalism, racial and gender equality, gay and trans liberation, immigrants' rights, the social safety net-as inherently frivolous, dishonest, a joke. By extension, the people who would benefit from the actualization of those values are "fake" Americans- the nation's most vulnerable groups being called decadent effetes ~ Lindy West

Unskilled in sophistry and new to the darker ways of national politics, Grover Cleveland faced his accusers, his slanderers, and his judges, the sovereign people, conscious of the general rectitude of his life, and courageously determined to bear the burdens of his sins in so far as guilt was his. ~ Grover Cleveland

Our national fondness for celebrating the physical heroism of soldiers - the apparent readiness with which they sacrifice their lives to larger causes - eclipses the far less romantic displays of moral and intellectual fortitude that also distinguish so many of them. In turning them all into heroes, we have lost a sense of the individuality they also fight to preserve. ~ Elizabeth Samet

For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you've never had sex, you're a "good" (i.e. "moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise. ~ Jessica Valenti

The No. 1 issue with women in this country is jobs, and the No. 2 issue is our national security. So, economic security, national security and retirement security. ~ Marsha Blackburn

Recognizing that family self-sufficiency is a false myth, we also need to acknowledge that all today's families need help in raising children. The problem is not so much to reeducate parents but to make available the help they need and to give them enough power so that they can be effective advocates with and coordinators of the other forces that are bringing up their children. ~ Kenneth Keniston

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. ~ Winston S. Churchill

I always take hundreds and hundreds of pictures. I used to work for 'National Geographic,' and they gave us a lot of film. ~ Yann Arthus-Bertrand

If the devil was going to come, I expected to see the myth of him. A demon with an asphalt shine. He'd be fury. A chill. A bad cough. Cujo at the car window, a ticket at the Creepshow booth, a leap into the depth of night. ~ Tiffany McDaniel

Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time. ~ Margaret Atwood

If there is not a united policy, this mechanism will not work: it will collapse, and it will ... undoubtedly be the end of Schengen, the return of national borders. ~ Francois Hollande

Keynes was chief economic adviser to the British government and largely responsible for keeping the British economy afloat at a time when more than half of our gross national product, and all of out foreign exchange, was being spent on the war ... I was lucky to be present at one of his rare appearances in Cambridge, when he gave a lecture with the title "Newton, the Man." ... Four years later he died of heart failure, precipitated by overwork and the hardships of crossing the Atlantic repeatedly in slow propeller-driven airplanes under wartime conditions. ~ Freeman Dyson

If popular mythology is to be believed, the discoverer of New Zealand was a Polynesian voyager named Kupe. Oddly, this myth was Pakeha in origin rather than Maori. Maori came to embrace it solely as a result of its widespread publication and dissemination in New Zealand primary schools between the 1910s and the 1970s. ~ Michael King

I condemn the national gay press for its emphasis on consumerism. ~ Harry Hay

I worked in rep for six years, then I came to London and to the National Theatre. What's better than that? ~ Imelda Staunton

There is scarcely any passion without struggle. ~ Albert Camus

In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

The reason it was so bruising when someone said I was from a rich family is that, like many of us, I'm deeply invested - probably overly so - in the myth of my own self-creation. I like to believe that I got where I am, such as it is, by working hard and charting my own course. ~ Meghan Daum

I've always really been interested in the Pygmalion myth and both what it has to say about creativity and what it has to say about relationships between men and women. ~ Zoe Kazan

We base our struggle on the concrete realities of our country. We appreciate the experiences and achievements of other peoples and we study them. But revolution or national liberation is like a dress which must fit to each individual's body. Naturally , there are certain general or universal laws, even scientific laws, for any condition, but the liberation struggle has to be developed according to the specific conditions of each country. " Cabral ~ Amilcar Cabral

Understanding different national, cultural, and religious traditions is no longer a luxury; it is now a necessity and must become a priority. The ~ Karen Armstrong

Folklore is a collection of ridiculous notions held by other people, but not by you and me. ~ Margaret Halsey

Canada's eminent position today is a tribute to the patience, tolerance, and strength of character of her people, of both French and British strains. For Canada is enriched by the heritage of France as well as of Britain, and Quebec has imparted the vitality and spirit of France itself to Canada. Canada's notable achievement of national unity and progress through accommodation, moderation and forbearance can be studied with profit by her sister nations. ~ Harry S. Truman

Grant paused in the act of turning the thing over, to consider the face a moment longer. A judge? A soldier? A prince? Someone used to great responsibility, and responsible in his authority. Someone too-conscientious. A worrier; perhaps a perfectionist. A man at ease in a large design, but anxious over details. A candidate for gastric ulcer. Someone, too, who had suffered ill-health as a child. He had that incommunicable, that indescribable look that childhood suffering leaves behind it; less positive than the look on a cripple's face, but as inescapable. This the artist had both understood and translated into terms of paint. The slight fullness of the lower eyelid, like a child that has slept too heavily; the texture of the skin; the old-man look in a young face.
He turned the portrait over to look for a caption.
On the back was printed: Richard the Third. From the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. Artist Unknown. ~ Josephine Tey

In selling his scheme, Obama has been promoting the myth that our system is no better than those of other advanced nations. His recent statements have betrayed his openly contemptuous attitude toward American health care and out top-flight medical profession. His attitude is consistent with his revealed general attitude about America, which he denigrates every time he gets a chance, especially on foreign soil. ~ David Limbaugh