quotes by Joseph Campbell

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

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— Joseph Campbell

"If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."
— Joseph Campbell

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."
— Joseph Campbell

"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."
— Joseph Campbell

"Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold."
— Joseph Campbell

"Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before."
— 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."
— Joseph Campbell

"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 without own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."
— Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth)

"If you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."
— Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth)

"Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths."
— Joseph Campbell

"Follow your bliss."
— Joseph Campbell

"“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.”"
— Joseph Campbell (Creative Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume IV))

"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."
— Joseph Campbell (Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor)

"Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world."
— Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)

"Gods suppressed become devils, and often it is these devils whom we first encounter when we turn inward."
— Joseph Campbell

"Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed."
— Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Mythos Books))

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

"Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute. ...Certainly Star Wars has a valid mythological perspective. It shows the state as a machine and asks, "Is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity?" Humanity comes not from the machine but from the heart. What I see in Star Wars is the same problem that Faust gives us: Mephistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means, and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine. Now, when Luke Skywalker unmasks his father, he is taking off the machine role that the father has played. The father was the uniform. That is power, the state role.

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— Joseph Campbell

"Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have one before us, the labyrinth is fully known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."
— Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)

"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."
— Joseph Campbell