Joseph Campbell Quotes

in America we have people from all kinds of backgrounds, all in a cluster, together, and consequentl...

You have to learn to recognize your own depths.

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, w...

When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a rela...

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.We must be willing to get rid of the life we plann...

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

With passion you want to possess. The conversion of passion into compassion is the whole problem of ...

Mythology is composed by poets out of their insights and realizations. Mythologies are not invented ...

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the exper...

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can ch...

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

You don't ask what a dance means. You enjoy it. You don't ask what the world means. You enjoy it. Yo...

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

The look that one directs at things, both outward and inward, as an artist, is not the same as that ...

I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money [not for purpose...

To call up modern versions of the old stories, one has to go forth and live life. As a result then, ...

[T]here is nothing to say about life. It has no meaning. You make meaning. If you want a meaning in ...

A bit of adviceGiven to a young Native AmericanAt the time of his initiation:As you go the way of li...

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.

When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very so...

Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how relia...

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

Computers are like Old Testament gods lots of rules and no mercy.

The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrou...

You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.

The boy answers, "Don't ask unless you are willing to be hurt."Indra says, "I ask. Teach." (That, by...

When a judge walks into the room, and everybody stands up, you’re not standing up to that guy, you’r...

All of life is a meditation, most of it unintentional.

There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who k...

The Garden is a metaphor for the following: our minds, and our thinking in terms of pairs of opposit...

When you have lived your individual life in your own adventurous way and then look back upon its cou...

Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, ar...

The problem in our society and in our schools is to inclulcate, without overdoing it, the notion of ...

When you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience t...

[T]he experience of mystery comes not from expecting it but through yielding all your programs, beca...

How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn...

With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With ou...

Is the god the source, or is the god a human manner of conceiving of the force and energy that suppo...

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

Mythology may, in a real sense, be defined as other people's religion. And religion may, in a sense,...

When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a c...

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there l...

I would say that all our sciences are the material that has to be mythologized. A mythology gives sp...

If you want to change the world, change the metaphor.

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

When you are on your path, and it is truly your path, doors will open for you where there were no do...

I don't have to have faith, I have experience.

Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.

Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it.

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, w...

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique pote...

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

A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in t...

Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.

The images of Myth are reflections of Spiritual and Depth potentialities of every one of us. Through...

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it ge...

A myth is something that has never happened, but is happening all the time.

Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa wh...

Passion makes most psychiatrists nervous

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

A hero ventures forth from the worldof common day into a region ofsupernatural wonder. Fabulous forc...

Every act has both good and evil results. Every act in life yields pairs of opposites in its results...

I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned him...

One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this cont...

Love is a friendship set to music.

If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.

The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves

How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your se...

All religions are true but none are literal.

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

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

Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the ...

If you want to understand what's most important to a society, don't examine its art or literature, s...

[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth,...

What we're learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We're learning technologies, we're get...

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

Myth is what we call other people's religion.

Thinking in mythological terms helps to put you in accord with the inevitables of this vale of tears...

People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s ...

A priest is a functionary of a social sort. The society worships certain deities in a certain way, a...

Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That’s why it’s good t...

Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mytholog...

Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your n...

Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in...

The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s ...

One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. T...

Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.

Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind i...

The moral, I suppose, would be that the first requirements for a heroic career are the knightly virt...

Society has provided [children] no rituals by which they become members of the tribe, of the communi...

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really...

When the Buddha declares there is escape from sorrow, the escape is Nirvana, which is not a place, l...

We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, ...

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

Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to ...

In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say 'Aha,' that is the...

The first function of mythology is showing everything as a metaphor to transcendence.