All religions are true but none are literal.

The line encapsulates a common Campbellian distinction between mythic “truth” and historical or scientific fact. Read this way, religions can be “true” insofar as their symbols, narratives, and rituals convey enduring psychological and ethical insights—about suffering, transformation, community, and the search for meaning—without being “literal” descriptions of external events. Campbell’s comparative-mythology approach treats sacred stories as metaphorical maps of human experience; insisting on literalism, he argues, mistakes the symbol for the referent and turns myth into bad history. The quote thus defends pluralism (many traditions can disclose wisdom) while critiquing fundamentalism (taking mythic language as reportage).