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.

Few are drawn to the person whom others avoid and neglect; people gather around those who have already attracted interest.

War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first written records of human history; it seemed to be an almost universal characteristic of human groups.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

Ultimately, I’m not doing that much. I’m only doing what a human being who feels wants to do – in my way, without stepping out of my flow, while staying in my lane. Without, I guess, boring people.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

The human being is a strange mixture of blind instinct, on one hand, and conscience, on the other.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

No one loves the man whom he fears.

I just always wanted to study human behavior because every psychologist that I would talk to would tell me I was bipolar, and I know I’m not bipolar, so I had to perform a psychoanalysis on myself to find out that I have unresolved grief.

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

People’s minds are changed through observation and not through argument.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

People hate as they love, unreasonably.

We judge people in areas where we’re vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we’re doing.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

As social animals, we are extremely susceptible to the moods of other people. This gives us the power to subtly infuse into people the appropriate mood for influencing them.

Boredom is… a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I’m obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.

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

The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

People use irony as a defense mechanism.

All emotion is involuntary when genuine.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

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.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

We’re the only animal that wakes up and doesn’t stretch.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

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

If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.

The flesh, or human nature, is generally lazy and self-centered.

I’m addicted to placebos.

People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that’s how they’ll react. But if you say, ‚We want peace, we want stability,‘ we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.

People like to hear the word ‚love.‘

The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.

Man is the most intelligent of the animals – and the most silly.

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

I can analyze people’s intentions. Immediately. That’s just a warning. To everyone.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

Some mischievous people always there. Last several thousand years, always there. In future, also.

Why does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you.