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
In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Choosing a deity reflects one's perspective on life and the universe.
This quote by Joseph Campbell suggests that the choice of a god or a guiding belief system profoundly influences how one interprets the world around them. It emphasizes the power of personal belief and the multitude of viewpoints available to each individual, encouraging people to select their own path in understanding existence.
Themes
ChoiceBeliefPerspectiveDeityUniverse
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophy class discussion on the nature of faith.
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
The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based - or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug - it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.
Carl SaganRead
The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.
James A. BaldwinRead
But meanwhile time flies; it flies never to be regained.
VirgilRead
We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument...Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege.
C. S. LewisRead
One half of the world's people live on less than two dollars a day. This should concern our national security policy as well as our conscience.
Lee H. HamiltonRead