When the reality was depressing, men tried to console themselves with myth.

On a higher level we find fictions that men eagerly believe, regardless of the evidence, because they gratify some wish.

Tradition usually rests upon something which men did know; history is often the manufacture of the mere liar.

"I tell you, lad, that men will believe is one says, "The Gods say..." They will believe if one says, "I had a Vision..." They will believe if one says, "It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold..." But, if one says, "History teaches," then they will not believe."

Myth therefore seems to choose history, rather than be chosen by it.

I tell you, lad, that men will believe if one says, 'The Gods say…' They will believe if one says, 'I had a Vision…' They will believe if one says, 'It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold…' But, if one says, 'History teaches,' then they will not believe.

I've always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.

What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on...

All men have a legend because of death. Humanity wasn't legendary any longer: it was a myth.

History as inspiration and ideology has a built-in tendency to become self-justifying myth. Nothing is a more dangerous blindfold than this, as the history of modern nations and nationalisms demonstrates.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.

History makes it clear, however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races, is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated.