Joseph Campbell Quotes

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“When you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you are was never born and will never die…. (90)”

“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

“You are the Hero of your own Story.”

“Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another.”

“There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder
and discovering that you’re on the wrong wall.”

“Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or the highroad to the soul's destination.”

“Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.”

“Preachers err by trying to talk people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery.”

“Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?”

“All life stinks and you must embrace that with compassion.”

“What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe.”

“How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92)”

“Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.

Love is a friendship set to music.”

“It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60).”

“When you follow your bliss… doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors, and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else.”

“The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.”

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

“They thought that it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path. If there is a path it is someone else's path and you are not on the adventure.”

“With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we could see that the earth and the heavens were no longer divided but that the earth is in the heavens. (105)”

“The problem in our society and in our schools is to inclulcate, without overdoing it, the notion of education, as in the Latin educere--to lead, to bring out what is in someone rather than merely to indoctrinate him/her from the outside. (89)”

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.”

“The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.”

“We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet.”

“Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late.”

“Mythology may, in a real sense, be defined as other people's religion. And religion may, in a sense, be understood as popular misunderstanding of mythology. (8)”

“Whether you call someone a hero or a monster is all relative to where the focus of your consciousness may be.”

“What we're learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We're learning technologies, we're getting information. There's a curious reluctance on the part of faculties to indicate the life values of their subjects.”

“God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.”

“He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable.”

“He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows.”

“When you are on the right path, invisible hands will come to your aid.”

“One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.”

“Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.”

“When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111)”

“Awe is what moves us forward.”

“Poets are simply those who have made a profession ans a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss.”

“Marriage is not a simple love affair, it’s an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.”

“He who thinks he knows, doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows. For in this context, to know is not to know. And not to know is to know.”

“Marriage… is not a love affair; it is an ordeal. (92)”

“How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task.”

“It's a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts.”

“Heresy is the life of a mythology, and orthodoxy is the death.”

“It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods from the searching telescope and microscope; there is no such society any more as the gods once supported.”

“No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold.”

“I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery.”

“The tribal ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage, burial, installation, and so forth, serve to translate the individual’s life-crises and life-deeds into classic, impersonal forms. They disclose him to himself, not as this personality or that, but as the warrior, the bride, the widow, the priest, the chieftain; at the same time rehearsing for the rest of the community the old lesson of the archetypal stages.”

“The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending; death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms which we have loved.”

“People ask me, "Do you have optimism about the world, about how terrible it is?" And I say, "Yes, it's great the way it is" … I had the wonderful privilege of sitting face to face with [a Hindu guru] and the first thing he said to me was "Do you have a question?", cause the teacher always answers questions… I said, "Yes, I have a question." I said, " Since in Hindu thinking all the universe is divine, a manifestation of divinity itself, how can we say no to anything in the world? How can we say no to brutality to stupidity to vulgarity to thoughtlessness?" And he said, "For you and me, you must say yes." Well, I learned from my friends who were students of his that that happened to be the first question he asked his guru, and we had a wonderful conversation for an hour there.”

“We are standing on a whale fishing for minnows.”