Joseph Campbell quotes

Joseph Campbell was a renowned American mythologist, writer, and lecturer whose works on comparative mythology continue to inspire millions. Born in 1904, Campbell's groundbreaking book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" explored the hero's journey archetype, captivating audiences worldwide. With a deep understanding of diverse cultural mythologies, Campbell revealed the universal patterns that underlie human storytelling. His influential concept of the "monomyth" continues to shape literature, film, and even marketing narratives. Discover the transformative power of Campbell's teachings and delve into the collective unconscious of humanity with his timeless works. Immerse yourself in the rich tapestry of myth and gain valuable insights into the human experience. Explore Joseph Campbell's thought-provoking books and lectures to unlock the hidden truths that lie within our shared myths.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Joseph Campbell

You are the hero of your own story.

- Joseph Campbell

Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.

- Joseph Campbell

We're not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.

- Joseph Campbell

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

- Joseph Campbell

There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder and discovering you’re on the wrong wall.

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Joseph Campbell

Regrets are illuminations come too late.

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Joseph Campbell

Myth is what we call other people's religion.

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

If you are falling... Dive!

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

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.

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Joseph Campbell