Joseph Campbell

“Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations.”

“Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possibilities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That’s where you are. You’ve got to keep both going. As Novalis said, 'The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet.”

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

“Follow your bliss”

“The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag.”

“The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.”

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

“As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don't bother to brush it off. Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance. Having a sense of humor saves you.”

“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one that you ARE living.”

“The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here is the place to have the experience.”

“How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick.”

“If you are falling....dive.”

“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.”

“If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor.”

“Myth is what we call other people's religion.”

“We're in a freefall into future. We don't know where we're going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you're going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It's a very interesting shift of perspective and that's all it is... joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.”

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

“God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, 'Ah!”

“There's nothing militant about Jesus. I don't read anything like that in any of the gospels. Peter drew his sword and cut off the servant's ear, and Jesus said, "Put back thy sword, Peter." But Peter has had his sword out and at work ever since.”

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

“We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomonation, we shall find a God.And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.And 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.”

“I don’t think people are really seeking the meaning of Life. I think we’re seeking an experience of being alive…we want to feel the rapture of being alive”

“We're not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.”

“You enter the forestat 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 realizeyour potential.”

“All religions are true but none are literal.”

“We save the world by being alive ourselves.”

“I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I've never met an ordinary man, woman or child.”

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”

“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?”

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

“Now I found it in writing sentences. You can write that sentence in a way that you would have written it last year. Or you can write it in the way of the exquisite nuance that is sriting in your mind now. But that takes a lot of ... waiting for the right word to come.”

“Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.”

“The rise and fall of civilizations in the long, broad course of history can be seen to have been largely a function of the integrity and cogency of their supporting canons of myth; for not authority but aspiration is the motivator, builder, and transformer of civilization.”

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

“A bit of adviceGiven to a young Native AmericanAt the time of his initiation:As you go the way of life,You will see a great chasm. Jump.It is not as wide as you think.”

“And if there was no Fall, what then of the need for Redemption? What god was offended and by whom? Some especially touchy cave bear whose skull had been improperly enshrined?”

“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.”

“Regrets are illuminations come too late.”

“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”

“Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.”

“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.”

“The Hero Path We have not even to risk the adventure alonefor 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 abominationwe shall find a God.And where we had thought to slay anotherwe shall slay ourselves.Where we had thought to travel outwardswe shall come to the center of our own existence.And where we had thought to be alonewe shall be with all the world.”

“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.”

“But the makers of legend have seldom rested content to regard the world's great heroes as mere human beings who broke past the horizons that limited their fellows and returned such boons as any man with equal faith and courage might have found.”

“Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed.”

“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.”

“For we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heros of all time have gone before us...”

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.”

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

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”