Joseph Campbell: Hero

Joseph Campbell was American mythologist, writer and lecturer. Explore interesting quotes on hero.
Joseph Campbell: 280   quotes 61   likes

“The passage of the mythological hero”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Source: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 2
Context: The passage of the mythological hero may be overground, incidentally; fundamentally it is inward—into depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revivified, to be made available for the transfiguration of the world.... Something of the light that blazes invisible within the abysses of its normally opaque materiality breaks forth, with an increasing uproar. The dreadful mutilations are then seen as shadows, only, of an immanent, imperishable eternity; time yields to glory; and the world sings with the prodigious, angelic, but perhaps finally monotonous, siren music of the spheres. Like happy families, the myths and the worlds redeemed are all alike.

“Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence — for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Epilogue
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)
Context: Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence — for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness. Thus, just as the way of social participation may lead in the end to a realization of the All in the individual, so that of exile brings the hero to the Self in all.

Perfection

“Most curiously, the very scientist who, in the service of the sinful king, was the brain behind the horror of the labyrinth, quite as readily can serve the purposes of freedom. But the hero-heart must be at hand. …He is the hero of the way of thought—singlehearted, courageous, and full of faith that the truth, as he finds it, shall make us free.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Source: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 1

Truth , Faith , Way , Courage

“The achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for and it's really a manifestation of his character.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 1, Chapter 12
The Power of Myth (1988)
Context: The achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for and it's really a manifestation of his character. It's amusing the way in which the landscape and conditions of the environment match the readiness of the hero. The adventure that he is ready for is the one that he gets … The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he didn't know he possessed.

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself”

Joseph Campbell

Variant: A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.

Life

“You are the Hero of your own Story.”

Joseph Campbell

“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.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 1, Opening introduction voice-over
The Power of Myth (1988)

God , World , Travel , Time

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

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

“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.”

Joseph Campbell

Source: The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Learning , Time

“If we could dredge up something forgotten not only by ourselves but by our whole generation or our entire civilization, we should become indeed the boonbringer, the culture hero of the day—a personage of not only local but world historical moment. In a word: the first work of the hero is to retreat from the world scene of secondary effects to those causal zones of the psyche where the difficulties really reside, and there to clarify the difficulties, eradicate them in his own case (i. e., give battle to the nursery demons of his local culture) and break through to the undistorted, direct experience and assimilation of what C. G. Jung called "the archetypal images." This is the process known to Hindu and Buddhist philosophy as viveka, "discrimination."”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Source: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 1

World

“The modern hero-deed must be that of questing to bring to light again the lost Atlantis of the co-ordinated soul.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Epilogue
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)

Soul , Light

“Everywhere, no matter what the sphere of interest (whether religious, political, or personal), the really creative acts are represented as those deriving from some sort of dying to the world; and what happens in the interval of the hero's nonentity, so that he comes back as one reborn, made great and filled with creative power, mankind is also unanimous in declaring. We shall have only to follow, therefore, a multitude of heroic figures through the classic stages of the universal adventure in order to see again what has always been revealed. …the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Source: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 3

Wisdom , World , Universe , Personality

“Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn. Furthermore, 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.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Source: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 1

God , Time , Heart , World