[Stephen Gerringer]

Hello Linda,

These certainly reflect Joseph Campbell’s perspective, but finding the exact source can be tricky.  Often Campbell “quotes”  found on the internet turn out to be truncated paraphrases of something Campbell said, or someone’s comment on a point of Campbell’s that someone else mistakenly assumed were Campbell’s own words and then re-shared them widely – which, as Lynn points out above, is certainly the case with the first quote, which is actually Deepak Chopra discussing Campbell (I happened to be in the room when he said it …), but has mistakenly been attributed to Joe because it does reflect his viewpoint.

So we’ll do our  best to track the second one down, but can’t guarantee anything. However, in the meantime, here are a couple related thoughts of Joe’s on myth vs. history:

Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed.”

Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces (Third Edition, Copyright © 2008 Joseph Campbell Foundation), p. 213

“Mythology, in other words, is psychology misread as biography, history, and cosmology.”

Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces (Third Edition, Copyright © 2008 Joseph Campbell Foundation), p. 219