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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
Read
Times
Means
Find
Without
Rituals
Mean
Ritual
York
Society

More quotes by Joseph Campbell

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Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself... The problem is not to blame or explain but to handle the life that arises... If you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing... The demon that you swallow gives you its power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply.
Joseph Campbell
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A one sentence definition of mythology? Mythology is what we call someone else's religion.
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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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.
Joseph Campbell
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To find your own way is to follow your bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where real deep bliss is -- not the quick little excitement , but the real deep, life-filling bliss.
Joseph Campbell
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The hero, therefore, is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations.
Joseph Campbell
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One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.
Joseph Campbell
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The ultimate dreamer is Vishnu floating on the cosmic Milky Ocean, couched upon the coils of the abyssal serpent Ananta, the meaning of whose name is Unending. In the foreground stand the five Pandava brothers, heroes of the epic Mahabharata, with Draupadi, their wife: allegorically, she is the mind and they are the five senses.
Joseph Campbell
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The actual point in question, throughout the centuries of Christian persecution, has never been faith in God, but faith in the Bible as the word of God, and in the Church (this Church or that) as the interpreter of that word.
Joseph Campbell
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Any god who can invent hell is no candidate for the Salvation Army
Joseph Campbell
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The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.
Joseph Campbell
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A woman is a vehicle of life. Life has overtaken her. Woman is what it is all about-the giving of birth and the giving of nourishment.
Joseph Campbell
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Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up.
Joseph Campbell
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Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.
Joseph Campbell
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You are the Hero of your own Story.
Joseph Campbell
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The last act in the biography of the hero is that of the death or departure.
Joseph Campbell
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You don't have to believe that there was a King Arthur to get the significance of those stories, but Christians say we have to believe there was a Christ, or the miracles don't make sense.
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The mighty hero of extraordinary powers, able to lift Mount Govardhan on a finger, and to fill himself with the terrible glory of the universe, is each of us: not the physical self visible in the mirror, but the King within.
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You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules
Joseph Campbell
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Perfection isn't human. Human beings are not perfect. What evokes our love--and I mean love, not lust--is the imperfection of the human being. So, when the imperfection of the real person peaks through, say, 'This is a challenge to my compassion.' Then make a try, and something might begin to get going.
Joseph Campbell