Carl Jung Quotes

Creative powers can just as easily turn out to be destructive. It rests solely with the moral personality whether they apply themselves to good things or to bad. And if this is lacking, no teacher can supply it or take its place.

It is only through the psyche that we can establish that God acts upon us, but we are unable to distinguish whether these actions emanate from God or from the unconscious. We cannot tell whether God and the unconscious are two different entities. Both are border-line concepts for transcendental contents. But empirically it can be established, with a sufficient degree of probability, that there is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness. Strictly speaking, the God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with this special content of it, namely the archetype of the Self.

Your vision will be clearer only when you manage to see within your heart.

Religion is a defense against the experience of God.

The whole point of Jesus's life was not that we should become exactly like him, but that we should become ourselves in the same way he became himself. Jesus was not the great exception but the great example.

One is forced to speak not of what is held in common between the cultures, but what is held in common between the myths, and that in its simplest archetypal forms.

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.

The word 'belief' is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it - I don't need to believe it.

Everyone you meet knows something you don't know but need to know. Learn from them.

Yoga in Mayfair or Fifth Avenue, or in any other place which is on the telephone, is a spiritual fake.

Individualization does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself.

The psychic depths are nature, and nature is creative life.

I have always said to my pupils: "Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it when you are analyzing a dream."

The unconscious is the unwritten history of mankind from time unrecorded.

It is high time that we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to preach the art of seeing.

We are a psychic process which we do not control, or only partly direct. Consequently, we cannot have any final judgment about ourselves or our lives.

We know that the wildest and most moving dramas are played not in the theatre but in the hearts of ordinary men and women.

The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without contradiction is only half a life; or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more than the angels.

Projection [of our own shadow] makes the whole world a replica of our own unknown face.

The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.

No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream.

The answer to human life is not to be found within the limits of human life.

The creative process is a living thing, implanted, as it were in the souls of men.

The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole.

Gnosticism was stamped out completely and its remnants are so badly mangled that special study is needed to get any insight at all into its inner meaning.

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

The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and elaborating and shaping the image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life.

Astrology is of particular interest to the psychologist, since it contains a sort of psychological experience which we call projected - this means that we find the psychological facts as it were in the constellations. This originally gave rise to the idea that these factors derive from the stars, whereas they are merely in a relation of synchronicity with them. I admit that this is a very curious fact which throws a peculiar light on the structure of the human mind.

As one grows older one must try not to work oneself to death unnecessarily. At least that's how it is with me ... I can scarcely keep pace and must watch out that the creative forces do not chase me around the universe in a wallop.

On the level of the Son there is no answer to the question of good and evil; there is only an incurable separation of the opposites ... It seems to me to be the Holy Spirit's task and charge to reconcile and reunite the opposites in the human individual through a special development of the human soul.

Enlightenment consists not merely in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, but in making the darkness visible. The latter procedure is more difficult and therefore, unpopular.

Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world.

Be grateful for your difficulties and challenges, for they hold blessings. In fact ... Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health personal growth, individuation and self-actualisation.

A man likes to believe that he is the master of his soul. But as long as he is unable to control his moods and emotions, or to be conscious of the myriad secret ways in which unconscious factors insinuate themselves into his arrangements and decisions, he is certainly not his own master.

Synchronistic phenomena prove the simultaneous occurrence of meaningful equivalences in heterogenous, causally unrelated processes; in other words, they prove that a content perceived by an observer can, at the same time, be represented by an outside event, without any causal connection. From this it follows either that the psyche cannot be localized in time, or that space is relative to the psyche.

No man can change himself into anything from sheer reason; he can only change into what he potentially is.

Unfortunately, there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and darker it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it

The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness.

During my medical education at the University of Basle I found vivisection horrible, barbarous and above all unnecessary

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

We don't so much solve our problems as we outgrow them. We add capacities and experiences that eventually make us bigger than the problems.

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.

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.

How can anyone see straight when he does not see himself and the darkness he unconsciously carries with him into all his dealings?

The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.

If God wishes to be born as man and to unite mankind in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, He suffers the terrible torment of having to bear the world in its reality. It is a crux; indeed, He Himself is His own cross. The world is God's suffering, and every individual human being who wishes even to approach his own wholeness knows very well that this means bearing his own cross. But the eternal promise for him who bears his own cross is the Paraclete.

The symbol in the dream has more the value of a parable: it does not conceal, it teaches.

Life is crazy and meaningful at once.

Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious.

The word 'happiness' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

The squaring of the circle is a stage on the way to the unconscious, a point of transition leading to a goal lying as yet unformulated beyond it. It is one of those paths to the centre.

The man of today, who resembles more or less the collective ideal, has made his heart into a den of murderers, as can easily be proved by the analysis of his unconscious, even though he himself is not in the least disturbed by it.

I do not believe ... I know.

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

I would rather be whole than good.

Science is not ... a perfect instrument, but it is a superb and invaluable tool that works harm only when taken as an end in itself.

To the critical intelligence, nothing is left of absolute reality.

You are a slave of what you need in your soul.

The sight of a child ... will arouse certain longings in adult, civilized persons - longings which relate to the unfulfilled desires and needs of those parts of the personality which have been blotted out of the total picture in favor of the adapted persona.

Between the dreams of night and day there is not so great a difference.

No language exists that cannot be misused ... Every Interpretation is hypothetical, for it is a mere attempt to read an unfamiliar text.

Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science.

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.

The principle aim of psychotherapy is not to transport one to an impossible state of happiness, but to help (the client) acquire steadfastness and patience in the face of suffering.

Learn your techniques well and be prepared to let them go when you touch the human soul.

He who looks without, dreams; he who looks within, awakes.

We discover ourselves through others.

The discussion of the sexual problem is only a somewhat crude prelude to a far deeper question, and that is the question of the psychological relationship between the sexes. In comparison with this the other pales into insignificance, and with it we enter the real domain of woman. Woman's psychology is founded on the principle of Eros, the great binder and loosener, whereas from ancient times the ruling principle ascribed to man is Logos.

A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction, with a consequent drain from some other side of life.

Not nature, but the "genius of mankind," has knotted the hangman's noose with which it can execute itself at any moment.

We are so accustomed to the apparently rational nature of our world that we can scarcely imagine anything happening that cannot be explained by common sense. The primitive man confronted by a shock of this kind would not doubt his sanity; he would think of fetishes, spirits or gods

Every human being is inherently a unique and individual form of life. He or she is made like that. But there is something which a person can do over and above the given material of her nature, and that is she can become conscious of what makes her the person she is, and he can work consciously toward relating what is himself to the world around him.

Only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the "treasure hard to attain." He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. This experience gives him faith and trust.

The ability to ask questions is the greatest resource in learning the truth.

Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is like yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfill the way that is in you.

The great problems of life - sexuality, of course, among others - are always related to the primordial images of the collective unconscious. These images are really balancing or compensating factors which correspond with the problems life presents in actuality. This is not to be marveled at, since these images are deposits representing the accumulated experience of thousands of years of struggle for adaptation and existence.

One cannot live without inconsistency.

The most dangerous things in the world are immense accumulations of human beings who are manipulated by only a few heads.

The curve of life is like the parabola of a projectile which, disturbed from its initial state of rest, rises and then returns to a state of repose ... Like a projectile flying to its goal, life ends in death. Even its ascent and its zenith are only steps and means to this goal ... For, enlightenment or no enlightenment, consciousness or no consciousness, nature prepares itself for death.

We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.

Our western mind lacking all culture in this respect, has never yet devised a concept, not even a name for "the union of opposites through the middle path", that most fundamental item of inward experience which could respectably be set against the Chinese concept of Tao.

A purely psychological explanation is ruled out ... the discs show signs of intelligent guidance, by quasi-human pilots ...

Identification with one's office or title is very attractive indeed, which is precisely why so many men are nothing more than the decorum accorded to them by society. In vain would one look for a personality behind the husk. Underneath one would find a very pitiable little creature. That is why the office is so attractive: it offers easy compensation for personal deficiencies.

Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. Whenever the Westerner hears the word "psychological," it always sounds to him like "only psychological.

The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual.

Never do human beings speculate more, or have more opinions, than about things which they do not understand.

We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together.

I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice.

Man can try to name love, showering upon it all the names at his command, and still he will involve himself in endless self deceptions. If he possesses a grain of wisdom he will lay down his arms and name the unknown by the more unknown - ignotum per ignotius - that is by the name of God.

Envy does not allow humanity to sleep.

A collection of a hundred great brains makes one big fathead.

A sense of a wider meaning to one's existence is what raises a man beyond mere getting and spending. If he lacks this sense, he is lost and miserable.

So they speak soothingly about progress and the greatest possible happiness, forgetting that happiness is itself poisoned if the measure of suffering has not been fulfilled.

I've realized that somebody who's tired and needs a rest, and goes on working all the same is a fool.

The unconscious psyche believes in life after death

No concept is a carrier of life.

What did you do as a child that made that hours pass like minutes? [Herein lies the key to your earthy pursuits.]

It is on the whole probably that we continually dream, but that consciousness makes such a noise that we do not hear it.

Whereas I formerly believed it to be my bounden duty to call other persons to order, I now admit that I need calling to order myself.

When an individual does not become conscious of their inner contradictions, the world acts out the conflict and is torn in opposite halves.