Joseph Campbell Quotes

“As you go the way of life, You will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think. 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.”

“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.”

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

“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. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The Hero Path: We have not even to risk the adventure alone for 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 abomination we shall find a God.

And where we had thought to slay another we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outwards 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.”

“The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, ‘Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.’ And so it starts.”

“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.”

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

“When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.”

“Whether you call someone a hero or a monster is all relative to where the focus of your consciousness may be.”

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

“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.”

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

“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 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.”

“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 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.”

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

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

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

“Regrets are illuminations come too late.”

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

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

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