Every people is a chosen people in its own mind. And it is rather amusing that their name for themselves usually means mankind.
Joseph CampbellChristianity isnโt moving peopleโs lives today. Whatโs moving peopleโs lives is the stock market and the baseball scores. What are people excited about? Itโs a totally materialistic level that has taken over the world. There isnโt even an ideal that anybodyโs fighting for.
Joseph CampbellMyths are stories for our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance. We all need to tell our story and to understand our story. We all need to understand death and to cope with death, and we all need help in our passages from birth to live and then to death. We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are.
Joseph CampbellAnything you do has a still point. When you are in that still point, you can perform maximally.
Joseph CampbellSometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. Thatโs an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life.
Joseph Campbell