Joseph Campbell Quotes

Joseph Campbell (1904 – 1987)

Joseph Campbell (1904 – 1987) was an American Professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell’s most well-known work is his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he discusses the journey of the archetypal hero shared by all of the world’s true mythologies, past and present.

One Journey Quotations

Quotes by Joseph Campbell…

Anyone writing a creative work knows that you open, you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself. To a certain extent, you become the carrier of something that is given to you from what have been called the Muses — or, in biblical language, “God.” This is no fancy. It is a fact. Since the inspiration comes from the unconscious, and since the unconscious minds of the people of any single small society have much in common, what the shaman or seer brings forth is something that is waiting to be brought forth in everyone. So when one hears the seer’s story, one responds, “Aha! This is my story. This is something that I had always wanted to say but haven’t been able to say.”

Joseph Campbell (1904 – 1987)