Selected Quotes By Carl Jung
"It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how things are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it."
Carl Jung, Wealth
"...anyone who attempts to do both, to adjust to his group and at the same time pursue his individual goal, becomes neurotic."
Carl Jung, Society
"We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life."
Carl Jung, Life
"I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole."
Carl Jung, Life
"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."
Carl Jung, Happiness
"We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Sensation tell us a thing is. Thinking tell us what it is this thing is. Feeling tells us what this thing is to us."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going."
Carl Jung, Arrogance
"Every human life contains a potential, if that potential is not fulfilled, then that life was wasted..."
Carl Jung, Life
"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."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. 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."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries."
Carl Jung, Life
"The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories."
Carl Jung, Society
"Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent."
Carl Jung, Society
"About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times."
Carl Jung, Happiness
"The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it."
Carl Jung, Life
"To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is."
Carl Jung, Life
"What you resist, persists."
Carl Jung, Life
"The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others."
Carl Jung, Life
"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."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom, Love
"I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears."
Carl Jung, Belief, Happiness
"There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. 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."
Carl Jung, Happiness
"Shame is a soul eating emotion."
Carl Jung, Life
"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."
Carl Jung, Life
"The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases."
Carl Jung, Life
"Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other."
Carl Jung, Love, Power
"The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ -- all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness -- that I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then? As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves."
Carl Jung, Belief
"Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life...If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature...Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life."
Carl Jung, Life
"The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents."
Carl Jung, Society
"How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole."
Carl Jung, Life
"Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We cannot change anything unless we accept it."
Carl Jung, Life
"Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event."
Carl Jung, Life
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being."
Carl Jung, Life
"Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not."
Carl Jung, Mistakes, Truth, Intelligence/Wisdom
"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."
Carl Jung, Life
"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
Carl Jung, Life
"No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell."
Carl Jung, Life
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There's no coming to consciousness without pain."
Carl Jung, Life
"The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely."
Carl Jung, Life
"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls."
Carl Jung, Society
"As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are."
Carl Jung, Life
"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism."
Carl Jung, Life
"The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."
Carl Jung, Life
"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible."
Carl Jung, Life
"You are what you do, not what you say you'll do."
Carl Jung, Life
"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become."
Carl Jung, Life
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
Carl Jung, Life
"Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."