1098 – “People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

-Greta Thunberg

1034 – “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

-Neil Gaiman paraphrasing Gilbert K Chesterton

Chesterton’s Quote: “Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.” [Emphasis Mine]

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765 – “I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young.”

–L Frank Baum

Today is Tell a Fairy Tale Day, so go out and reread your favorite or tell a new one!

625 – “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

–C S Lewis