Quotes from Joseph Campbell

I think of mythology as the homeland of the muses, the inspirers of art, the inspirers of poetry. To see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is what the myth does for you.

Poetry comes out of an elite experience, the experience of people whose ears are opened to the song of the universe.

It's characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong.

Economics and politics are the governing powers of life today, and that's why everything is so screwy.

God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, 'Ah!

Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and door will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive

The demon that you can swallow gives you it's power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply.

God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.

The goal is to live with God like composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard, without being torn to pieces.

God is an intelligible sphere-a sphere known to mind, not to the senses-whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.

We keep thinking of deity as a kind of fact, somewhere; God as a fact. God is simply our own notion of something that is symbolic of transcendence and mystery. The mystery is what's important.

What you have to do, you do with play. The universe is God's play.

In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours.

Any god who can invent hell is no candidate for the Salvation Army

There is a God inside my PC. An Old-Testament God with lots of arbitrary rules and utterly no mercy.

There is a condescension on the part of the infinite to the mind of man. That is what looks like God.

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 version of a myth known to many lands.

You know, when real trouble comes your humanity is awakened. The fundamental human experience is that of compassion.

When you are on your path, and it is truly your path, doors will open for you where there were no doors for someone else.

The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.

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.

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

For we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heros of all time have gone before us.