“Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.”
On the ideas of Sigmund Freud, p. 66.
Strong Opinions (1973)
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Vladimir Nabokov 193
Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor 1899–1977Related quotes

“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.”

“For myth is alive at once and in all its parts, and dies before it can be dissected.”
"Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (1936), p. 14
Context: The significance of a myth is not easily to be pinned on paper by analytical reasoning. It is at its best when it is presented by a poet who feels rather than makes explicit what his theme portends; who presents it incarnate in the world of history and geography, as our poet has done. Its defender is thus at a disadvantage: unless he is careful, and speaks in parables, he will kill what he is studying by vivisection, and he will be left with a formal or mechanical allegory, and what is more, probably with one that will not work. For myth is alive at once and in all its parts, and dies before it can be dissected.
“The [Greek] myths were… attempting—at a deeper level—to feel the intangible and say the unsayable.”
Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

February 2008 http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB120451614688707083.html
2000s, 2008

"We March Back to Olympus" in Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns (1977), p. 11

"Credo" at his official website http://robertfulghum.com/index.php/fulghumweb/credo/; this may be partly influenced by remarks of Albert Einstein in "What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck" The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929): I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
