Carl Jung Quotes

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.

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.

In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a ‚continent,‘ a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.

Just as we might take Darwin as an example of the normal extraverted thinking type, the normal introverted thinking type could be represented by Kant. The one speaks with facts, the other relies on the subjective factor. Darwin ranges over the wide field of objective reality, Kant restricts himself to a critique of knowledge.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

A ‚scream‘ is always just that – a noise and not music.

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us.

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.

Everyone knows nowadays that people ‚have complexes‘. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.

We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.

A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

The word ‚happy‘ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?

Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.

Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.

We shall probably get nearest to the truth if we think of the conscious and personal psyche as resting upon the broad basis of an inherited and universal psychic disposition which is as such unconscious, and that our personal psyche bears the same relation to the collective psyche as the individual to society.

The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity.

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.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.