quotes by 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

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

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

"Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold."
— 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 4)

"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)

"All religions are true but none are literal."
— Joseph Campbell

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

"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)

"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."
— Joseph Campbell

"Regrets are illuminations come too late."
— Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)

"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)

"“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.” "
— Joseph Campbell

"If you are falling....dive."
— 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 with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."
— 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 Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work)

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

"Myth is what we call other people's religion."
— Joseph Campbell

"God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, 'Ah!'"
— Joseph Campbell

"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?"
— Joseph Campbell

"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."
— Joseph Campbell (The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work)

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

"The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag."
— Joseph Campbell

"Preachers err by trying to talk people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery."
— Joseph Campbell

"I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I've never met an ordinary man, woman or child."
— Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth)

"All life stinks and you must embrace that with compassion."
— Joseph Campbell (Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation)

"For we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heros of all time have gone before us..."
— Joseph Campbell

"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."
— Joseph Campbell (The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work)

"When you follow your bliss...doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors, and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else. "
— 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."
— Joseph Campbell

"We save the world by being alive ourselves."
— 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

"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."
— Joseph Campbell

"A bit of advice
Given to a young Native American
At 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.""
— Joseph Campbell

"The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe to match your nature with Nature."
— Joseph Campbell

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

"The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure "
— Joseph Campbell

""Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.""
— Joseph Campbell

"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek."
— Joseph Campbell

"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."
— Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)

"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."
— Joseph Campbell

"Follow your bliss.
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 you ought to be living
is the one you are living.
When you can see that,
you begin to meet people
who are in the field of your bliss,
and they open the 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.
If you follow your bliss,
doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.

- Joseph Campbell "
— Joseph Campbell

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

"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."
— 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 within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."
— Joseph Campbell

"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."
— Joseph Campbell