From time to time I come up with a quote or I come across one that I like and I will jot down here. At some point I will have a dedicated page for Joseph Campbell quotes.
When I look deep inside myself, I see the universe quietly staring back at me.
All the time
Science, philosophy and religion are not necessarily in conflict with one another, much in the same way as a dirty big iceberg in a shipping lane is not in conflict with the good ships SS Religion and SS Philosophy.
22 February 2009
We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet.
Power of Myth Joseph Campbell
I cannot prove that electrons exist, but I believe fervently in their existence. And if you don’t believe in them, I have a high voltage cattle prod I’m willing to apply as an argument on their behalf. Electrons speak for themselves.
Seth Lloyd Quantum Mechanical Engineer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
So if you’re going to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you’re going to have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain mental respects.
Galen Strawson
Aristotle and others saw spirit in matter, knowable though observation and self knowledge, but in Plato’s world, the spirit remains forever locked in conflict with the degraded body. This “dualism” of Plato haunts humanity to this day.
The Jesus Sayings Rex Weyler
As I walk through this life I will leave footprints; much in the same way as I am myself a footprint.
20 July 2009
You yourself are participating in evil, or you are not alive. Whatever you do is evil to someone. This is one of the ironies of creation.
Power of Myth Joseph Campbell
The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.
Aart Van Der Leeuw
Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.
Clarence Darrow
But genes are not imprisoned in bodies; the same gene lives in the bodies of many family members at once. The dispersed copies of a gene call to one another by endowing bodies with emotions. Love, compassion, and empathy are invisible fibers that connect genes in different bodies.
How the Mind Works Steven Pinker
Religion is a defense against the experience of God.
Carl Jung
That is to say, put yourself back in the position of paradise before you thought in terms of good and evil. You don’t hear that much from the pulpits.
Power of Myth Joseph Campbell
As a devout agnostic I know nothing, people seem to agree with me.
Often
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it
Terry Pratchett
It is absurd to believe that an agent can be responsible for an action when no factor contributing to that action is up to the agent.
Michael Anthony Istvan Jr
The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other.
Kurt Gödel
… a small frontier fortress. Admittedly the fortress is impregnable, but the garrison can never sally forth from it, therefore we can pass it by, and leave it in our rear without danger.
Arthur Schopenhauer describing solipsism
The plural form of the noun “mistake” is “life.”
anon
Puppets and puppeteers are the illusion. It’s all one jumbled string.
30 March 2023
Men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion that they have not reasoned themselves into
Fisher Ames 1786
Faith is never having to say you are wrong.
anon
Science seeks correspondence by destroying coherence
Antirealism March 2025
If a belief system requires violence to sustain itself against symbolic challenge, then it’s exposing its own fragility.
ChatGPT June 2025
I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.
attributed to Richard Feynman
We come from everything
We return to everything
In between, we play with the illusion of separation.
3 September 2025
Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
Marie Curie
No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.
Virginia Wolf
If you kill a cockroach, you are a hero; if you kill a butterfly, you are evil. Morals have aesthetic criteria.
attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche
rom's corner 