Carl Jung Quotes

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

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

I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.

You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.

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

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.

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

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

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

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.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.

No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.

There's no coming to consciousness without pain.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

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

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.

Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event.

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.

We cannot change anything unless we accept it.

Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.

The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.

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

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.

Shame is a soul eating emotion.

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.

The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.

The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.

The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers. Carl Jung Swiss psychologist (1875 - 1961)

The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.

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.

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.

Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries.

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.

Every human life contains a potential, if that potential is not fulfilled, then that life was wasted...

Sensation tell us a thing is. Thinking tell us what it is this thing is. Feeling tells us what this thing is to us.

I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.

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

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

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.

...anyone who attempts to do both, to adjust to his group and at the same time pursue his individual goal, becomes neurotic.

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.

If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.

No tree can grow to Heaven,” adds the ever-terrifying Carl Gustav Jung, psychoanalyst extraordinaire, “unless its roots reach down to Hell.

There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion

Maybe the only thing each of us can see is our own shadow. Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations. The same way old painters would sit in a tiny dark room and trace the image of what stood outside a tiny window, in the bright sunlight. The camera obscura. Not the exact image, but everything reversed or upside down.

Deep down, below the surface of the average man's conscience, he hears a voice whispering, "There is something not right," no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or moral code.

Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next.

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.

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.

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

Words are animals, alive with a will of their own

Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.

The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual becomes.

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being.

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.

Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interests upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change.