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

Joseph Campbell

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Joseph Campbell
Age: 83 †
Born: 1904
Born: March 26
Died: 1987
Died: October 30
Academic
Anthropologist
Essayist
Ethnologist
Historian
Historian Of Religion
Lecturer
Mythologist
Orator
Researcher
Short Story Writer
White Plains
New York
Joseph John Campbell
Joseph Cambell
Groups
Myths
Individual
Identify
Need
Locals
Needs
Local
Myth
Planet
Group
Planets

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One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of it.
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The function of the artist is the mythologization of the culture and the world. In the visual arts there were two men whose work handled mythological themes in a marvelous way: Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso.
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We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.
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If you want to find out what it means to have a society without any rituals, read the New York Times.
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Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life is negativism to life. We are not there until we can say 'yea' to it all.
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There is a condescension on the part of the infinite to the mind of man. That is what looks like God.
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Gods suppressed become devils, and often it is these devils whom we first encounter when we turn inward.
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The seizure of passionate love can be, in such a context, only illicit, breaking in upon the order of one's dutiful life in virtue as a devastating storm.
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Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. I have bought this wonderful machine — a computer ... it seems to me to be an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.
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Through dreams a door is opened to mythology, since myths are of the nature of dreams, and that, as dreams arise from an inward world unknown to waking consciousness, so do myths: so, indeed, does life.
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When you no longer are compelled by desire and fear . . . when you have seen the radiance in eternity from all forms of time . . . when you follow your bliss . . . doors will open where you would not have thought there were doors . . . and the world will step in and help.
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The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.
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For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state.
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One looks, looks long, and the world comes in.
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The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero.
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Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things.
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...suddenly you hit on something that the student really responds to, you can see the eyes open and the complexion change. The life possibility has opened there. All you can say to yourself is, I hope this child hangs on to that.
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What is unknown is the fulfillment of your own unique life, the likes of which has never existed on earth. And you are the only one who can do it. People can give you clues how to fall and when to stand, and when you are falling and when you are standing, this only you can know. And in the way of your own talents is the only way to do it.
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The notion of this universe, its heavens, hells, and everything within it, as a great dream dreamed by a single being in which all the dream characters are dreaming too, has in India enchanted and shaped the entire civilization.
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God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, 'Ah!
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