Joseph Campbell citations

Page 4

“Follow your inner heart and the world moves in and helps.”

“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.”

“Society has provided [children] no rituals by which they become members of the tribe, of the community. All children need to be twice born, to learn to function rationally in the present world, leaving childhood behind.”

“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.”

“It's only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world.”

“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.”