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.
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Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
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The profound nature of relativity is not merely an abstraction of physics, it also explains why the distance from 1 to 1 million is greater than from 3 million to 5 million.
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It takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they speak with the accent of natives they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds.
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The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
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Everything that explains the world has in fact explained a world that does not exist, a world in which men are at the center of the human enterprise and women are at the margin helping them. Such a world does not exist -- never has.
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Alas! While the speculative honourable professor explains the entire existence has he in distraction forgotten his own name, that he is a man, purely and simply a man, not a fantastic 3
8 of a paragraph.
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The belief in God is not therefore based on the perception of design in nature. Belief in design in nature is based upon the belief in God. Things are as they are whether there is a God or not. Logically, to believe in design one must start with God. He, or it, is not a conclusion but a datum. You may begin by assuming a creator, and then say he did this or that; but you cannot logically say that because certain things exist, therefore there is a God who made them. God is an assumption, not a conclusion. And it is an assumption that explains nothing.
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I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.
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The anthropologists are busy, indeed, and ready to transport us back into the savage forest where all human things have their beginnings but the seed never explains the flower.
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I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains
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Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders.
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Adam was but human - this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
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A gift - be it a present, a kind word or a job done with care and love - explains itself... and if receivin' it embarrasses you, it's because your 'thanks box' is warped.
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Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.
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The innocent is the person who explains nothing.
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