A Quote by Paul Ricoeur

But myth is something else than an explanation of the world, of history, and of destiny.

Paul Ricoeur

Quote Topics

Destiny Else Explanation History Myth Something Something Else Than World

Quote Author

Paul Ricoeur
French - Philosopher
February 27, 1913 - May 20, 2005

But myth is something else than an explanation of the world, of history, and of destiny. Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence. Hence to demythologize is to interpret myth, that is, to relate the objective representations of the myth to the self-understanding which is both shown and concealed in it.

Paul Ricoeur

Think about it: you've already related it down to something that somebody else can understand. If art relates to something - it's like Picasso, it's like Mondrian - it's not. Art's supposed to be what it is. Using a reference of art history might help for some kind of sales, but it doesn't really help anybody. Art is what it is; it cannot be footnoted, until it enters the world. Then it has a history. Then the footnotes are the history, not the explanation.

Lawrence Weiner

To be an American (unlike being English or French or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always been, insofar as we are Americans at all, inhabitants of myth rather than history.

Leslie Fiedler

There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to realize myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have succeeded, this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is realizable. Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.

Eugene Ionesco

If something comes up that is completely freaky, it's spiritual-looking to the scientist, the first explanation is not going to be that it's God, because the history of that has failed. It would have to be, like, the hundredth explanation.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

A myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances that cast the shadows.

Annie Besant

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.

C. S. Lewis

But if it not be true, the myth itself requires to be explained, and every principle of philosophy and common sense demand that the explanation be sought, not in arbitrary allegorical categories, but in the actual facts of ritual or religious custom to which the myth attaches.

William Robertson Smith

Destiny is something not be to desired and not to be avoided. a mystery not contrary to reason, for it implies that the world, and the course of human history, have meaning.

Dag Hammarskjold

Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.

Joseph Campbell

Destiny ... a word which means more than we can find any definitions for. It is a word which can have no meaning in a mechanical universe: if that which is wound up must run down, what destiny is there in that? Destiny is not necessitarianism, and it is not caprice: it is something essentially meaningful. Each man has his destiny, though some men are undoubtedly "men of destiny" in a sense in which most men are not.

T. S. Eliot

A myth is a fixed way of looking at the world which cannot be destroyed because, looked at through the myth, all evidence supports the myth.

Edward de Bono

A too often forgotten truth is that you can live through actual events of history and completely miss the underlying reality of what's going. What history misses, the myth clearly expresses. The myth in the hands of a genius give us a clear picture of the inner import of life itself.