In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Dogs never bite me – just humans.

I love reading people. I really enjoy watching, observing, and being able to figure out a person, the reason they wore that dress, the reason they smell the way they do.

The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.

The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images.

All emotion is involuntary when genuine.

Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.

Contention does not usually begin as strife between countries. More often, it starts with an individual, for we can contend within ourselves over simple matters of right and wrong. From there, contention can infect neighbors and nations like a spreading sore.

He does it with better grace, but I do it more natural.

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn’t drink, they didn’t smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

I didn’t just invent saying offensive things.

People forget that Mozart wrote for commissions. There’s a thing in psychology where they think if it’s popular, it can’t be serious.

Ritual is another word for fear, manifested in a different way.

When you’re young, you’re very reckless. Then you get conservative. Then you get reckless again.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

No honest writer today can possibly avoid being influenced by Freud through his pioneering work into the Unconscious and by the influence of those discoveries on the scientific, philosophic, and artistic work of his contemporaries: but not, by any means, necessarily through Freud’s own writing.

The infinite faith I have in people’s ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.

No matter how hard we might wish, we will not be able to transform China’s behavior overnight.

Most men are within a finger’s breadth of being mad.

Before I became a film major, I was very heavily into social science, I had done a lot of sociology, anthropology, and I was playing in what I call social psychology, which is sort of an offshoot of anthropology/sociology – looking at a culture as a living organism, why it does what it does.

I have a slight bit of OCD, I think. I’m not walking around flipping light switches. But when I say I’m going to do something, I have to do it.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

I didn’t do anything at the Queen, whom I admire.

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

I’m very much a creature of habit.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.

For how many things, which for our own sake we should never do, do we perform for the sake of our friends.

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What’s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

No one loves the man whom he fears.

Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.

The Christ-symbol is of the greatest importance for psychology in so far as it is perhaps the most highly developed and differentiated symbol of the self, apart from the figure of the Buddha.

Lenience will operate with greater force, in some instances than rigor. It is therefore my first wish to have all of my conduct distinguished by it.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.