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The folktale is the primer of the picture-language of the soul.

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
Folktales
Primer
Picture
Language
Soul

More quotes by Joseph Campbell

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The problem in our society and in our schools is to inclulcate, without overdoing it, the notion of education, as in the Latin educere--to lead, to bring out what is in someone rather than merely to indoctrinate him/her from the outside. (89)
Joseph Campbell
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The images of Myth are reflections of Spiritual and Depth potentialities of every one of us. Through contemplating those we evoke those powers in our own lives to operate through ourselves.
Joseph Campbell
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The perfect human being is uninteresting.
Joseph Campbell
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Our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it.
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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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.
Joseph Campbell
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The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
Joseph Campbell
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Successful marriage is leading innovative lives together, being open, non-programmed. It’s a free fall: how you handle each new thing as it comes along. As a drop of oil on the sea, you must float, using intellect and compassion to ride the waves.
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
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Make your god transparent to the transcendent, and it doesn't matter what his name is.
Joseph Campbell
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It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
Joseph Campbell
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Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower.
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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Man actually needs the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.
Joseph Campbell
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Mephistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means, and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine.
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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The demon that you can swallow gives you it’s power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.
Joseph Campbell
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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
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God is an intelligible sphere-a sphere known to mind, not to the senses-whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.
Joseph Campbell
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I think what we lack isn't science, but poetry that reveals what the heart is ready to recognize
Joseph Campbell