Joseph Campbell Quotes

212 Sourced Quotes

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

Joseph Campbell
We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. -

Joseph Campbell
It is by going down into the abyss
that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble,
there lies your treasure.

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

Joseph Campbell
We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.

Joseph Campbell
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

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

Joseph Campbell
For people who are really alive to have life awakened is more important than to get a sandwich.

Joseph Campbell
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.

Joseph Campbell
You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's path. You are not on your own path. If you follow someone else's way, you are not going to realize your potential.

Joseph Campbell
The principle of compassion is that which converts disillusionment into a participatory companionship. This is the basic love, the charity, that turns a critic into a living human being who has something to give to - as well as to demand of - the world.

Joseph Campbell
What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss.

Joseph Campbell
When you see the earth from the moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or states.
This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come.
That is the country that we are going to be celebrating.
And those are the people that we are one with.

Joseph Campbell
There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call "atheists," and those who think they are facts are "religious." Which group really gets the message?

Joseph Campbell
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.

Joseph Campbell
All the old bindings are broken. Cosmological centers now are anywhere and everywhere. The earth is a heavenly body, most beautiful of all, and all poetry is now archaic that fails to match the wonder of this view.

Joseph Campbell
Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. Follow the path that is no path, follow your bliss.

Joseph Campbell
What is required is the finding of that Immovable Point within one's self, which is not shaken by any of those tempests which the Buddhists call 'the eight karmic winds': 1-fear of pain, 2-desire for pleasure; 3-fear of loss; 4-desire for gain; 5-fear of blame, 6-desire for praise; 7-fear of disgrace; [and] 8-desire for fame.

Joseph Campbell
The realms of the gods and demons - heaven, purgatory, hell - are of the substance of dreams. Myth, in this view, is the dream of the world.

Joseph Campbell
You don't ask what a dance means. You enjoy it. You don't ask what the world means. You enjoy it. You don't ask what you mean. You enjoy it.

Joseph Campbell
The best things cannot be told, the second best are misunderstood. After that comes civilized conversation; after that, mass indoctrination; after that, intercultural exchange.

Joseph Campbell
Every people is a chosen people in its own mind. And it is rather amusing that their name for themselves usually means mankind.

Joseph Campbell
The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.

Joseph Campbell
The Greeks, it will be recalled, regarded Eros, the god of love, as the eldest of the gods; but also as the youngest, born fresh and dewy-eyed in every living heart.

Joseph Campbell
The ground of being is the ground of our being, and when we simply turn outward, we see all of these little problems here and there. But, if we look inward, we see that we are the source of them all.

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

Joseph Campbell
Men sometimes confess they love war because it puts them in touch with the experience of being alive. In going to the office every day, you don't get that experience, but suddenly in war, you are ripped back into being alive. Life is pain; life is suffering; and life is horror - but, by God, you are alive.

Joseph Campbell
The familiar life horizon has been outgrown: the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand.

Joseph Campbell
The departure from the world is regarded not as a fault, but as the first step into that noble path at the remotest turn of which illumination is to be won.

Joseph Campbell
The person who thinks he has found the ultimate truth is wrong.

Joseph Campbell