Joseph Campbell Quotes

Symbols are specific acts or figures, while myths develop and elaborate these symbols into a story which contains characters and several episodes. The myth is thus more inclusive. But both symbol and myth have the same function psychologically; they are man's way of expressing the quintessence of his experience - his way of seeing his life, his self-image and his relations to the world of his fellow men and of nature - in a total figure which at the same moment carries the vital meaning of this experience.

we must not blame our poor symbols if they take forms that seem trivial to us, or absurd, ... however paltry they may be; the nature of our life alone has determined their forms.

The man who speaks with primordial images, speaks with a thousand tongues.

Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.

The symbol is greater than visible substance. . . . Unhappy the land that has no symbols, or that chooses their meaning without great care.

Espousing the melancholy of ancient symbols, I would have freed myself.

All religious expression is symbolism.

Myths are so intimately bound to culture, time, and place that unless the symbols, the metaphors, are kept alive by constant recreation through the arts, the life just slips away from them.

In the products of the unconscious we discover mandala symbols, that is, circular and quaternity figures which express wholeness, and whenever we wish to express wholeness, we employ just such figures.

Even if you don't like colours, you will end up having something red. For everyone who doesn't like colour, red is a symbol of a lot of culture. It has a different signification but never a bad one.

Everything I do is a metaphor of the universal order.

In any architecture, there is an equity between the pragmatic function and the symbolic function.

Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.

Myths are stories that express meaning, morality or motivation. Whether they are true or not is irrelevant.

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.

Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning.

Being a literature major, you know, I'm very familiar with the ways symbolism is used in our sort of mythic tales of society, so anyone who is consciously trying to pull that off I think is really interesting and clearly very smart.

Apparently, the pathfinder duck is a psychological archetype in certain cultures.

I appear to be drawn to iconic characters and what they reflect back to our cultures.

Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.

African art is functional, it serves a purpose. It's not a dormant. It's not a means to collect the largest cheering section. It should be healing, a source a joy. Spreading positive vibrations.

If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.

Left ear, I wear four earrings. The four is symbolic of the four seasons, spring, winter, summer and fall, the four directions, north, east, south and west, the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

As a folklorist, I have come to believe that no piece of folklore continues to be transmitted unless it means something - even if neither the speaker nor the audience can articulate what that meaning might be.

Mythology is part of our heritage, part of our identity at times because anywhere in India you will find the name of Rama or Krishna in one or the other form.