History fades into fable, fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy, the inscription molders from the tablet, the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids — what are they but heaps of sand, and their epitaphs but characters written in the dust?
—Washington Irving
When ideas go unexamined and unchallenged for a long enough time, certain things happen. They become mythological, and they become very, very powerful. They create conformity. They intimidate.
—E. L. Doctorow
Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all.
—Gerald W. Johnson
True myths may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blond Hero — really look — and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. "You must change your life," he said. When the true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message: "You must change your life.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
To explain why we become attached to our birthplaces, we pretend that we are trees and speak of "roots." Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled growths sprouting through the soles. Roots, I sometimes think, are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places.
—Salman Rushdie
The American myth that anyone who works hard will get ahead, and that wealth accumulation is a product of individual effort and merit, is no longer sustainable.
—Manning Marable