Joseph Campbell Quotes

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

“All religions are true but none are literal.”

“All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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 for you where there were only walls.”

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

“He who thinks he knows, doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows.”

“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.”

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

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

“I think the person who takes a job in order to live – that is to say, for the money (not for purpose or passion) – has turned himself into a slave.”

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

“If you are falling... Dive!”

“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.”

“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.

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.

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.”

“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?”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Limitations have a power within you to which you have not given expression, and you push them back. And then, like all repressed energy, it builds up and builds up to the position that you are trying to hold.

The monsters in your life are the limitations that you refuse to address and integrate. These monsters block you from achieving an integrated life.”

“Love is a friendship set to music.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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