Joseph Campbell

“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.”

“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.”

“Out of perfection nothing can be made.”

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

“In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams.”

“It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those that tend to tie it back. In fact, it may very well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid. We remain fixated to the unexorcised images of our infancy, and hence disinclined to the necessary passages of our adulthood.”

“Dream is personalized myth, myth is depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problem and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“This death to the logic of emotional commitments of our chance moment in the world of space and time, this recognition of, the shift of our emphasis to, the universal life that throbs and celebrates its victory in the very kiss of our own annihilation, this amor fati, "love of fate," love of the fate that is inevitably death, constitutes the experience of the tragic art...”

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

“There is no make-believe about heaven, future bliss, and compensation, to alleviate the bitter majesty, but only utter darkness, the void of unfulfillment, to receive and eat back the lives that have been tossed forth from the womb only to fail.”

“Sober, modern Occidental judgement is founded on a total misunderstanding of the realities depicted in the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedies of redemption. These, in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete.”

“we today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best, with only tentative, impromptu, an not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern 'enlightened' individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Our life evokes our character and you find out more about yourself as you go on.”

“This thing up here, this consciousness, thinks it's running the shop. It's a secondary organ. It's a secondary organ of a total human being, and it must not put itself in control. It must submit and serve the humanity of the body.”

“It's a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts.”

“Follow your bliss.”

“People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about.”

“When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity.”

“I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery.”

“We are standing on a whale fishing for minnows.”

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

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

“You become mature when you become the authority of your own life.”

“Now, what is a myth? The dictionary definition of a myth would be stories about gods. So then you have to ask the next question: What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power or a value system that functions in human life and in the universe - the powers if your own body and of nature.”

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

“One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”

“The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are happy-not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call "following your bliss."”

“Heresy is the life of a mythology, and orthodoxy is the death.”

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

“All cultures … have grown out of myths. They are founded on myths. What these myths have given has been inspiration for aspiration. The economic interpretation of history is for the birds. Economics is itself a function of aspiration. It’s what people aspire to that creates the field in which economics works.”

“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

“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.”

“Marx teaches us to blame society for our frailties, Freud teaches us to blame our parents, and astrology teaches us to blame the universe. The only place to look for blame is within: you didn't have the guts to bring up your full moon and live the life that was your potential.”

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

“One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.”

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

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

“What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.”

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

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

“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.”

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

“Love is a friendship set to music.”

“Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”

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

“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”

“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

“Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.”

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

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

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

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

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

“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.”

“Love is a friendship set to music.”

“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.”

“I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.”

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

“When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.”

“So during the years of the Depression I had arranged a schedule for myself. When you don’t have a job or anyone to tell you what to do, you’ve got to fix one for yourself. I divided the day into 4 four-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the four-hour periods, and free one of them. By getting up a 8 o’clock in the morning, by 9 I could sit down to read. That meant that I used the first hour to prepare my own breakfast and take care of the house and put things together in whatever shack I happened to be living in at the time. Then three hours of that first four-hour period went to reading. Then came an hour break for lunch and another three-hour unit. And then comes the optional next section. It should normally be three hours of reading and then an hour out for dinner and then three hours free and an hour getting to bed so I’m in bed by 12. On the other hand, if I were invited out for cocktails or something like that, then I would put the work hour in the evening and the play hour in the afternoon. It worked very well. I would get nine hours of sheer reading done in a day. And this went on for five years straight. You get a lot done in that time.”

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

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

“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?”

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

“One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.”

“What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.”

“When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity.”

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.”

“Love is a friendship set to music.”

“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.”

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