Quotes about Joseph Campbell

Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.

Mythology is the womb of mankind's initiation to life and death.

And if there was no Fall, what then of the need for Redemption? What god was offended and by whom? Some especially touchy cave bear whose skull had been improperly enshrined?

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.

With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we could see that the earth and the heavens were no longer divided but that the earth is in the heavens. (105)

Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world.

The water in which the mystic swims is the same water a madman drowns in.

My definition of mythology is other people's religion, which suggests that ours must be something else. My definition of religion, then, is misunderstood mythology — and the misunderstanding consists in mistaking the symbol for the reference. So all the historic events that are so important to us in our tradition should not be important to us in any way except as symbols of power within ourselves.

You changed the definition of a myth from the search for meaning to the experience of meaning. CAMPBELL: Experience of life.

Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, the words of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. JOSEPH CAMPBELL, Esalen, 1983

What is the kingdom [of God]? it lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us.

And so the impulses of nature are what give authenticity to life, not obeying rules come from a supernatural authority, that's the sense of the Grail.