"I don't have to have faith, I have experience"
About this Quote
Campbell’s line is a neatly sharpened blade aimed at the soft underbelly of modern spirituality: the desire to believe without doing the work. “I don’t have to have faith” isn’t a sneer at religion so much as a refusal of secondhand conviction. Faith, in his framing, is what you reach for when you don’t have direct contact. Experience is the receipt.
The subtext is classic Campbell: myth isn’t primarily a set of claims to assent to, it’s a technology for producing inner recognition. He spent his career arguing that the gods are metaphors for psychological realities, that rituals and stories are maps of consciousness rather than newspaper reportage. So when he says he has “experience,” he’s suggesting his certainty comes from something lived and repeatable - the kind of insight you get through disciplined attention, art, love, loss, meditation, maybe even the simple act of noticing your own patterns. It’s empirical, but not lab-coat empirical; it’s the empiricism of the inner life.
Context matters. Campbell is speaking from the mid-century American moment where traditional belief was fraying and “spiritual but not religious” had a runway. The quote gives that audience permission to stop apologizing for not buying doctrine while also raising the bar: if you’re not going to have faith, you’re responsible for seeking the experience that makes faith unnecessary. It’s a humblebrag with a challenge embedded inside it.
The subtext is classic Campbell: myth isn’t primarily a set of claims to assent to, it’s a technology for producing inner recognition. He spent his career arguing that the gods are metaphors for psychological realities, that rituals and stories are maps of consciousness rather than newspaper reportage. So when he says he has “experience,” he’s suggesting his certainty comes from something lived and repeatable - the kind of insight you get through disciplined attention, art, love, loss, meditation, maybe even the simple act of noticing your own patterns. It’s empirical, but not lab-coat empirical; it’s the empiricism of the inner life.
Context matters. Campbell is speaking from the mid-century American moment where traditional belief was fraying and “spiritual but not religious” had a runway. The quote gives that audience permission to stop apologizing for not buying doctrine while also raising the bar: if you’re not going to have faith, you’re responsible for seeking the experience that makes faith unnecessary. It’s a humblebrag with a challenge embedded inside it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|
More Quotes by Joseph
Add to List
