Joseph Campbell Quotes

“A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. A goal is what specifically you intend to make happen. Dreams and goals should be just out of your present reach but not out of sight. Dreams and goals are coming attractions in your life.”

“The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.”

“Awe is what moves us forward.”

“We are standing on a whale fishing for minnows.”

“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?”

“All life stinks and you must embrace that with compassion.”

“The Deadheads are doing the dance of life and this I would say is the answer to the atom bomb.”

“The experience of Eternity right here and now, is the function of life.”

“Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”

“What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.”

“The seizure of passionate love can be, in such a context, only illicit, breaking in upon the order of one's dutiful life in virtue as a devastating storm.”

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

“You've got to find the force inside you.”

“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 part of faculties to indicate the life values of their subjects.”

“Wisdom and foolishness are practically the same. Both are indifferent to the opinions of the world”

“Our life evokes our character and you find out more about yourself as you go on.”

“One looks, looks long, and the world comes in.”

“Love is perfect kindness.”

“Every story you tell is your own story.”

“If you follow your bliss...the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”

“Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up.”

“We are having experiences all the time which may on occasion render some sense of this, a little intuition of where your bliss is. Grab it. No one can tell you what it is going to be. You have to learn to recognize your own depth.”

“The big problem of any young person's life is to have models to suggest possibilities. Nietzsche says, 'Man is the sick animal.' Man is the animal that doesn't know what to do with itself. The mind has many possibilities, but we can live no more than one life. What are we going to do with ourselves?”

“Let the world be as it is and learn to rock with the waves.”

“If you're going to have a story, have a big story, or none at all.”