No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold.
Joseph CampbellRead
If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that a true journey is unpredictable and shaped by individual choices rather than a pre-defined plan.
Joseph Campbell's quote suggests that if a journey or path is completely laid out, it is not truly yours. A genuine path in life is carved out through personal decisions and experiences, highlighting the importance of individual agency and the unpredictability of our journeys. Each step one takes contributes uniquely to one's life direction, making it inherently personal and distinct from others.
Themes
PathJourneyChoicesIndividualityLife
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about pursuing personal goals.
More from Joseph Campbell
All quotes →Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.
Joseph CampbellRead
Christianity isn’t moving people’s lives today. What’s moving people’s lives is the stock market and the baseball scores. What are people excited about? It’s a totally materialistic level that has taken over the world. There isn’t even an ideal that anybody’s fighting for.
Joseph CampbellRead
Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end. The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth—that is the world as we know it that must pass away. What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us.
Joseph CampbellRead
The demon that you can swallow gives you it’s power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.
Joseph CampbellRead
And if there was no Fall, what then of the need for Redemption? What god was offended and by whom? Some especially touchy cave bear whose skull had been improperly enshrined?
Joseph CampbellRead
Similar quotes
Which brings me to my conclusion upon Free Will and Predestination, namely - let the reader mark it - that they are identical.
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Whether humanity is to comprehensively prosper...depends entirely on the integrity of the human individuals and not on the political and economic systems. The cosmic question has been asked: are humans worthwhile to universe invention?
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To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult, but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go, and clinging cannot be limited: even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray. Just let things be in their own way and there will be neither coming nor going. Obey the nature of things (your own nature), and you will walk freely and undisturbed.
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Law cannot stand aside from the social changes around it.
William J. BrennanRead
To be more free is the goal of all our efforts, for only in perfect freedom can there be perfection.
Swami VivekanandaRead
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.
T. S. EliotRead