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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.

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
Without
Rituals
Mean
Ritual
York
Society
Read
Times
Means
Find

More quotes by Joseph Campbell

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At first you might find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred space and use it, eventually something will happen. Your sacred space is where you find yourself again and again.
Joseph Campbell
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Once you know the difference between right and wrong, you have lots fewer decisions to make.
Joseph Campbell
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If you are to advance, all fixed ideas must go.
Joseph Campbell
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Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.
Joseph Campbell
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You've got to say yes to this miracle of life as it is, not on condition that it follow your rules.
Joseph Campbell
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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.
Joseph Campbell
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The realms of the gods and demons - heaven, purgatory, hell - are of the substance of dreams. Myth, in this view, is the dream of the world.
Joseph Campbell
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If you can see your path clearly in front of you, it's probably someone else's.
Joseph Campbell
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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.
Joseph Campbell
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If you see your path laid out in front of you - Step one, Step two, Step three - you only know one thing . . . it is not your path. Your path is created in the moment of action. If you can see it laid out in front of you, you can be sure it is someone else's path. That is why you see it so clearly.
Joseph Campbell
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What is required is the finding of that Immovable Point within one's self, which is not shaken by any of those tempests which the Buddhists call 'the eight karmic winds': 1-fear of pain, 2-desire for pleasure 3-fear of loss 4-desire for gain 5-fear of blame, 6-desire for praise 7-fear of disgrace [and] 8-desire for fame.
Joseph Campbell
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If you follow someone else's way, you are not going to realize your potential.
Joseph Campbell
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The idea of the Bodhisattva is the one who out of his realization of transcendence participates in the world. The imitation of Christ is joyful participation in the sorrows of the world.
Joseph Campbell
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There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call atheists, and those who think they are facts are religious. Which group really gets the message?
Joseph Campbell
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The purpose of the journey is compassion. When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion.
Joseph Campbell
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He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows.
Joseph Campbell
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Now I found it in writing sentences. You can write that sentence in a way that you would have written it last year. Or you can write it in the way of the exquisite nuance that is sriting in your mind now. But that takes a lot of ... waiting for the right word to come.
Joseph Campbell
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Every religion, every mythology is true in this sense: It is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery.
Joseph Campbell
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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.
Joseph Campbell
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If there were already a path, it would have to be someone else's the whole point is to find your own way.
Joseph Campbell