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A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes. (Emperor Hirohito )
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. (Emperor Hirohito )
Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description. (Emperor Hirohito )
It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths. (Emperor Hirohito )
The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal. It expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values. Because myth anchors the present in the past it is a sociological charter for a future society which is an exact replica of the present one. (Emperor Hirohito )
Myths which are believed in tend to become true. (Emperor Hirohito )
Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts. (Emperor Hirohito )
All the great things have been denied and we live in an intricacy of new and local mythologies, political, economic, poetic, which are asserted with an ever-enlarging incoherence. (Emperor Hirohito )
The poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets the states and the lawmakers had sanctioned them as a useful expedient. They needed to control the people by superstitious fears, and these cannot be aroused without myths and marvels. (Emperor Hirohito )
One may as well preach a respectable mythology as anything else. (Emperor Hirohito )
The myth of Bardot is finished, but Brigitte is me. (Emperor Hirohito )
But it's also another myth to think that you should be as tight as a drum and not have any frailties or fragilities. (Emperor Hirohito )
They do not depend upon mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine and that the Japanese people are superior to other races. (Emperor Hirohito )
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