Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
“The image of God is your final obstruction to a religious experience.” — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Every religion, every mythology is true in this sense: It is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
I think of compassion as the fundamental religious experience and, unless that is there, you have nothing. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Preachers err by trying to talk people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion... The hoarder, the one in us that wants to keep, to hold on, must… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
A one sentence definition of mythology? Mythology is what we call someone else's religion. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
What gods are there, what gods have there ever been, that were not from man's imagination? — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Mythology is often defined as 'other peoples' religions', religion can be thought of as misinterpreted mythology. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
The actual point in question, throughout the centuries of Christian persecution, has never been faith in God, but faith in the Bible… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Mythology may, in a real sense, be defined as other people's religion. And religion may, in a sense, be understood as popular… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
There have been systems of religion where the mother is the prime parent, the source, and she's really a more immediate parent… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
“One of our problems today is that we are not well acquainted with the literature of the spirit.' 'We're interested in the… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Our demons are our own limitations, which shut us off from the realization of the ubiquity of the spirit . . .… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Mythologies, in other words, mythologies and religions are great poems and, when recognized as such, point infallibly through things and events to… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
We are all born as animals and live the life that animals live: we sleep, eat, reproduce, and fight. There is, however,… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
“One finds the same basic mythological themes in all the religions of the world, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated,… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
So I think the Guru can be a delusion. But everything can be deluding. The thing central about the Guru in the… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
The psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
We can safely say, therefore, that whereas some moralists may find it possible to make a distinction between two spheres and reigns-one… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules,… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
If a person does not listen to the demands of their own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program,… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
“The return and reintegration with society, which is indispensable to the continuous circulation of spiritual energy into the world, and which, from… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
“The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
“It is not easy for students to realize that to ask, as they often do, whether God exists and is merciful, just,… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
“The idea of the supernatural as being something over and above the natural is a killing idea. In the Middle Ages this… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
“One of the most interesting histories of what comes of rejecting science we may see in Islam, which in the beginning received,… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
“Now, eternity is beyond all categories of thought. This is an important point in all of the great Oriental religions. We want… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
If a person does not listen to the demands of their own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
The last act in the biography of the hero is that of the death or departure. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
The eternal principle, which never was born, never will die: it is in all things: it is in you now. You are the wave… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
How do you find the divine power in yourself? The word enthusiasm means 'filled with a god,' so what makes you enthusiastic? Follow it.… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
What we're learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We're learning technologies, we're getting information. There's a curious reluctance on the… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
The fall [of your soul] from perfection into duality...was naturally followed by the discovery of the duality of good and evil...This is the Biblical… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
So that's what destiny is: simply the fulfillment of the potentialites of the energies in your own system. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
Your ego is your embodiment and your self is your potentiality and that's what you listen to when you listen for the voice of… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
When you follow your bliss a kind of track opens up, that's always been there, waiting for you. And the life that you should… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
I think of mythology as the homeland of the muses, the inspirers of art, the inspirers of poetry. To see life as a poem… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
Both the artist and the lover know that perfection is not loveable. It is the clumsiness of a fault that makes a person lovable. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
