Joseph Campbell Quotes

“This, I believe, is the great Western truth: that each of us is a completely unique creature and that, if we are ever to give any gift to the world, it will have to come out of our own experience and fulfillment of our own potentialities, not someone else's.”

“Marriage is not a simple love affair, it's an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.”

“Follow your inner heart and the world moves in and helps.”

“One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.”

“One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of it.”

“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.”

“Eternity is not the hereafter...this is it. If you don't get it here you won't get it anywhere.”

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Fear of the unknown is our greatest fear. Many of us would enter a tiger's lair before we would enter a dark cave. While caution is a useful instinct, we lose many opportunities and much of the adventure of life if we fail to support the curious explorer within us.”

“For people who are really alive to have life awakened is more important than to get a sandwich.”

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

“There is what I would call the hero journey, the night sea journey, the hero quest, where the individual is going to bring forth in his life something that was never beheld before.”

“All men are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy Because everybody's mind is capable of true knowledge, you don't have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be.”

“You become mature when you become the authority of your own life.”

“Life is but a mask worn on the face of death. And is death, then, but another mask? 'How many can say,' asks the Aztec poet, 'that there is, or is not, a truth beyond?'”

“If there were already a path, it would have to be someone else's; the whole point is to find your own way.”

“Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you’re alive and its spectacular.”

“The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.”

“The influence of a vital being vitalizes.”

“We have to permit go with the everyday living we had prepared so as to have the lifetime that's watching for us”

“There is no greater privilege in life than being yourself.”

“What we are really living for is the experience of life, both the pain and the pleasure.”

“Art is the set of wings to carry you out of your own entanglement.”

“Heroism is a matter of integrity--beco ming more and more at each step ourselves.”

“The dreamer and his dream are the same...the powers personified in a dream are these that move the world.”

“We're in a freefall into future. We don't know where we're going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you're going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It's a very interesting shift of perspective and that's all it is... joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.”