938 Quotes by Joseph Campbell


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

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  • Author Joseph Campbell
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    How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task.

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  • Author Joseph Campbell
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    The problem of the theologian is to keep his symbol translucent, so that it may not block out the very light it is supposed to convey.

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  • Author Joseph Campbell
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    Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth – penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.

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  • Author Joseph Campbell
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    The secret cause of all suffering,” he said, “is mortality itself, which is the prime condition of life. It cannot be denied if life is to be affirmed.

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