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
Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes personal responsibility for one's life and choices.
Joseph Campbell's quote urges individuals to recognize that their life experiences and circumstances are a direct result of their own actions and decisions. It suggests that rather than blaming external factors or others for one's situation, one should take ownership and understand that they have the power to shape their own destiny through their choices.
Themes
ResponsibilityChoicesLifeOwnershipDestiny
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech, you could use this quote to inspire accountability in a team.
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
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To see the other side, to defend another people, not despite your tradition but because of it, is the heart of pluralism
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When a faith-healer commands God to perform a miracle, in the absence of a prayer that says, 'Thy will be done,' it is, as far as I am concerned, the most rank form of arrogance . . . The faith-healer Bosworth once said that faith makes God act. If you follow that line of reasoning God is in His heaven, but Bosworth rules the world!
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In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people.
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Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.
Marcus AureliusRead