Joseph Campbell Quotes About Myth

Quotes about: Myth

• There's nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way, you will find, live, and become a realization of your own personal myth.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Wisdom

  Joseph Campbell (2009). “Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation: Easyread Large Edition”, p.185, ReadHowYouWant.com

• 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.

  Joseph Campbell

  Art, Thinking, Doe

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.65, Anchor

• The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made manifest-as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars.

  Joseph Campbell

  Stars, Destiny, Men

• The psyche is the inward experience of the human body, which is essentially the same in all human beings, with the same organs, the same instincts, the same impulses, the same conflicts, the same fears. Out of this common ground have come what Jung has called the archetypes, which are the common ideas of myths.

  Joseph Campbell

  Ideas, Inward, Body

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.60, Anchor

• A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.

  Joseph Campbell

  Depth, Consciousness, Myth

• Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Truth, Important

• Now all the myths that you have heard and that resonate with you, those are the elements from round about that you are building into a form in your life. The thing worth considering is how they relate to each other in your context, not how they relate to something out there-how they were relevant on the North American prairies or in the Asian jungles hundreds of years agon, but how they are relevant now-unless by contemplating their former meaning you can begin to amplify your own understanding of the role they play in your life.

  Joseph Campbell

  Years, Play, Understanding

• Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.

  Joseph Campbell

  Nature, Art, Mirrors

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.68, Anchor

• If you live with the myths in your mind, you will find yourself always in mythological situations. They cover everything that can happen to you. And that enables you to interpret the myth in relation to life, as well as life in relation to myth.

  Joseph Campbell

  Life, Finding Yourself, Mind

• Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Dream, Business

• Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Poetry, Biographies

  Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.213, New World Library

• The rise and fall of civilizations in the long, broad course of history can be seen to have been largely a function of the integrity and cogency of their supporting canons of myth; for not authority but aspiration is the motivator, builder, and transformer of civilization.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Integrity, Fall

• Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths. By finding your own dream and following it through, it will lead you to the myth-world in which you live. But just as in dream, the subject and object, though they seem to be separate, are really the same.

  Joseph Campbell

  Dream, World, Myth

• Myths are the world's dreams. They are archetypal dreams and deal with great human problems. Myths and dreams come from the same place. They come from realizations of some kind that then have to find expression in symbolic form.

  Joseph Campbell

  Dream, Expression, Realization

• Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Art, People

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.107, Anchor

• Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors.

  Joseph Campbell

  Narrative, Metaphor, Myth

  Joseph Campbell (2002). “The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion”, p.28, New World Library

• Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation.

  Joseph Campbell

  Secret, Energy, Cosmos

  Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.1, New World Library

• [Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. ...Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms...

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Men, Joy

  "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell, New World Library, (Ch. 2), 1949.

• Dream is personalized myth, myth is depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problem and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.

  Joseph Campbell

  Dream, Peculiar, Way

  "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell, New World Library, (Ch. 1), 1949.

• The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact

  Joseph Campbell

  Doe, Facts, Heroic

• We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet.

  Joseph Campbell

  Groups, Needs, Individual

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.30, Anchor

• Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts -- but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message.

  Joseph Campbell

  People, Inward, Messages

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.5, Anchor

• Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historica l, macrocosmic triumph. Whereas the former-the youngest or despised child who becomes the master of extraordinary powers-prevails over his personal oppressors, the latter brings back from his adventure the means for the regeneration of his society as a whole.

  Joseph Campbell

  Children, Hero, Adventure

• The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul, and the great agent to assist the artist was the myth.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Artist, Soul

• The myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth.

  Joseph Campbell

  Love, Dream, Dreamer

  "The Power of Myth".

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