Joseph Campbell Quotes

The surest way to lose truth is to pretend that one already wholly possesses it.

What I learned is that it's arrogant to be certain of anything. The world is a complex place and only idiots or assholes think they know it all.

A man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all the doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false.

The more you think you know, the more closed-minded you'll be.

For only when I err do I get away from what I know and what I understand. If "truth" were what I can understand, it would end up being but a small truth, my-sized. Truth must reside precisely in what I shall never understand.

The greatest obstacle to discovering the truth is being convinced that you already know it.

If you think you know it all, you are missing something.

There is but a slight difference between the man who may be said to know nothing and him who thinks he knows everything.

Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.

The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.

The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn-the less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything.

No one but a fool is always right.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is.

No one, however smart, however well educated … is the suppository of all wisdom.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.

Beware of current truths.

The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.

I suppose that one is always tempted to challenge those who think that they and they alone possess the truth or the way or the key to the mystery.

Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic. The man who knows nothing thinks he is teaching others what he has just learned himself; the man who knows a great deal can't imagine that what he is saying is not common knowledge, and speaks more indifferently.

No one is infallible, and no one can claim a monopoly on truth or virtue. It would be contradictory for skepticism to seek to translate itself into a new faith.

I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

The vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never having understood anything. For anyone who had ever experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is accomplished, would recognize that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.

We must quit thinking we know everything, and quit placing "knowledge" over kindness and compassion.