Joseph Campbell Thinking Quotations

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.

I think of compassion as the fundamental religious experience and, unless that is there, you have nothing.

Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.

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.

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.

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

Could God exist if nobody else did? No. That’s why gods are very avid for worshipers. If there is nobody to worship them, there are no gods. There are as many gods as there are people thinking about God. In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours. The god you worship is the god you deserve.

Sacred space and sacred time and something joyous to do is all we need. Almost anything then becomes a continuous and increasing joy. What you have to do, you do with play. I think a good way to conceive of sacred space is as a playground. If what you're doing seems like play, you are in it. But you can't play with my toys, you have to have your own. Your life should have yielded some. Older people play with life experiences and realizations or with thoughts they like to entertain. In my case, I have books I like to read that don't lead anywhere.

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.

I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman, or child.

If you will think of ourselves as coming out of the earth, rather than having been thrown in here from somewhere else, you see that we are the earth, we are the consciousness of the earth. These are the eyes of the Earth. And this is the voice of the earth.

I think that Jean Houston has broken through to a new understanding of the sense and uses of inward-turned contemplation-a n understanding that leaves the Freudian schools of technique and theory far behind. The accent is not on the curing of disease but on the enlargement, rather, of our health.

The importance of the End of time is as ... a psychological event ... When you have seen the radiance of eternity through all the forms of time ... and it is the function of art to make that visible to you ... then you have really have ended life in the world as it is lived by those who only think only in the historical, concretizing terms. This is the function of mythology.

So I think the Guru can be a delusion. But everything can be deluding. The thing central about the Guru in the West is that he represents an alien principle of the spirit, namely, that you don't follow your own path; you follow a given path. And that's totaly contrary to the Western Spirit! Our spirituality is of the individual quest, individual realization- authenticity in your life out of your own center. So you must take the message of the East, assimilate it to your own dimension and to your own thrust of life, and not get pulled off track.

I think what we lack isn't science, but poetry that reveals what the heart is ready to recognize

Thinking in mythological terms helps to put you in accord with the inevitables of this vale of tears. You learn to recognize the positive values in what appear to be the negative moments and aspects of your life. The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.

The person who thinks he has found the ultimate truth is wrong.

We are kept out of the Garden by our own fear and desire in relation to what we think to be the goods of our life.

You may have success in life, but then just think of it - what kind of life was it? What good was it - you've never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off.

Revolution doesn't have to do with smashing something, it has to do with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out.

What will they think of me? Must be put aside for bliss

You have been thinking one way. Now you have to think a different way.

Eternity is not a long time; rather, it is another dimension. It is that dimension to which time-thinking shuts us. And so there never was a creation. Rather, there is a continuous creating going on. This energy is pouring into every cell of our being right now, every board and brick of the buildings we sit in, every grain of sand and wisp of wind.

I think of mythology as a function of biology; the energies of the body are the energies that move the imagination. These energies are the source, then, of mythological imagery; in a mythological organization of symbols, the conflicts between the different organic impulses within the body are resolved and harmonized. You might say mythology is a formula for the harmonization of the energies of life.

I don’t think people are really seeking the meaning of Life. I think we’re seeking an experience of being alive…we want to feel the rapture of being alive

I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery.

You are more than you think you are. There are dimensions of your being and a potential for realization and consciousness that are not included in your concept of yourself. Your life is much deeper and broader than you conceive it to be here. What you are living is but a fractional inkling of what is really within you, what gives you life, breadth, and depth.

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

It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60).

The Garden is a metaphor for the following: our minds, and our thinking in terms of pairs of opposites--man and woman, good and evil--are as holy as that of a god. (50)