I had to climb a mountain. There were all kinds of obstacles in the way. I had now to jump over a ditch, now to get over a hedge, and finally to stan… - Joseph Campbell

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I had to climb a mountain. There were all kinds of obstacles in the way. I had now to jump over a ditch, now to get over a hedge, and finally to stand still because I had lost my breath.

This was the dream of a stutterer.

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About Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell (26 March 1904 – 30 October 1987) was an American professor, writer, and orator most famous for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: Joseph John Campbell Smith
Alternative Names: Joseph John Campbell Joseph Cambell

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Additional quotes by Joseph Campbell

All these different mythologies give us the same essential quest. You leave the world that you’re in and go into a depth or into a distance or up to a height. There you come to what was missing in your consciousness in the world you formerly inhabited. Then comes the problem either of staying with that, and letting the world drop off, or returning with that boon and trying to hold on to it as you move back into your social world again. That’s not an easy thing to do.

"Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute. ...Certainly Star Wars has a valid mythological perspective. It shows the state as a machine and asks, "Is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity?" Humanity comes not from the machine but from the heart. What I see in Star Wars is the same problem that Faust gives us: Mephistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means, and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine. Now, when Luke Skywalker unmasks his father, he is taking off the machine role that the father has played. The father was the uniform. That is power, the state role."

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The paradox of creation, the coming of the forms of time out of eternity, is the germinal secret of the father. It can never be quite explained. Therefore, in every system of theology, there is an umbilical point, an Schillies tendon, which the finger of mother life has touched, and where the possibility of perfect knolwege has been imparted. The problem of the hero is to pierce himself (and therewith his world) precisely through that point; to shatter and annhilate the key knot of his limited existence.
The problem of the hero going to meet the father is open to his soul beyon terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and rutheless comsmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands - and the two are atoned.

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