C.G. Jung Quotes - Page 2

Creative power is mightier than its possessor.
C.G. Jung
I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud. ”—Psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung in a 1919 address to the Society for Psychical Research in England
C.G. Jung
Is that which science calls the “psyche” not merely a question-mark arbitrarily confined within the skull, but rather a door that opens upon the human world from a world beyond, now and again allowing strange and unseizable potencies to act upon him and to remove him, as if upon the wings of the night, from the level of common humanity to that of a more personal vocation?
C.G. Jung
People think you have only to ‘tell’ a person that he ‘ought’ to do something in order to put him on the right track. But whether he can or will do it is another matter.
C.G. Jung
There are people, of course, who think it unscientific to take anything seriously; they do not want their intellectual playground disturbed by graver considerations. But the doctor who fails to take account of man's feelings for values commits a serious blunder, and if he tries to correct the mysterious and well-nigh inscrutable workings of nature with his so-called scientific attitude, he is merely putting his shallow sophistry in place of nature's healing processes.
C.G. Jung
But the shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive, unadapted, and awkward; not wholly bad. It even contains childish or primitive qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence, but convention forbids!
C.G. Jung
The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself.
C.G. Jung
We all feel that the opposite of our own highest principle must be purely destructive, deadly, and evil. We refuse to endow it with any positive life-force; hence we avoid and fear it.
C.G. Jung
A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one. Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally shortsighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the world had seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the hands of a single madman. Unfortunately, this realization does not seem to have penetrated very far - and our blindness is extremely dangerous.
C.G. Jung
The unconscious is not a demoniacal monster, but a natural entity which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgement go, is completely neutral. It only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases. But the moment the patient begins to assimilate contents that were previously unconscious, its danger diminishes. The dissociation of personality, the anxious division of the day-time and the night-time sides of the psyche, cease with progressive assimilation.
C.G. Jung
As understanding deepens, the further removed it becomes from knowledge.
C.G. Jung
You know, it is sometimes an ideal not to have any kind of convictions or feelings that are not based upon reality. One must even educate people...that their emotions ought to have a real basis, that they cannot swear hell and damnation at somebody on a mere assumption, and that there are absolute reasons why they are not justified in doing such a thing. They really have to learn that their feelings should be based on facts.But to [develop further] one should unlearn all that. One should even admit that all one's psychical facts have nothing to do with material facts. For instance, the anger which you feel for somebody or something, no matter how justified it is, is not caused by those external things. It is a phenomenon all by itself. That is what we call taking a thing on its subjective level. ...If you have reached that level...you have succeeded in dissolving the absolute union of material external facts with internal or psychical facts. You begin to consider the game of the world as your game, the people that appear outside as exponents of your psychical condition. Whatever befalls you, whatever experience or adventure you have in the external world, is your own experience.
C.G. Jung
That you find Kierkegaard "frightful" has warmed the cockles of my heart. I find him simply insupportable and cannot understand, or rather, I understand only too well, why the theological neurosis of our time has made such a fuss over him. You are quite right when you say that the pathological is never valuable. It does, however, cause us the greatest difficulties and for this reason we learn the most from it.
C.G. Jung
It is not the universal and the regular that characterize the individual, but rather the unique. He is not to be understood as a recurrent unit but as something unique and singular which in the last analysis can be neither known nor compared with anything else.
C.G. Jung
The psyche’s attachment to the brain, i.e., its space-time limitation, is no longer as self-evident and incontrovertible as we have hitherto been led to believe. … It is not only permissible to doubt the absolute validity of space-time perception; it is, in view of the available facts, even imperative to do so.
C.G. Jung
To be quite accurate, human nature is simply what it is; it has its dark and its light sides. The sum of all colours is grey - light on a dark background or dark on light.
C.G. Jung
...the mind that is collectively orientated is quite incapable of thinking and feeling in any other way than by projection.
C.G. Jung
There is no Archimedean point from which to judge, since the psyche is indistinguishable from its manifestations. The psyche is the object of psychology, and -fatally enough- also its subject. There is no getting away from this fact."Psychology and Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.8
C.G. Jung
The psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual
C.G. Jung
‎"...the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
C.G. Jung
The stone has no uncertainties, no urge to communicate, and is eternally the same for thousands of years, while I am only a passing phenomenon which bursts into all kinds of emotions, like a flame that flares up quickly and then goes out.
C.G. Jung
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.
C.G. Jung
Sensation tell us a thing is.Thinking tell us what it is this thing is.Feeling tells us what this thing is to us.
C.G. Jung
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.
C.G. Jung
Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event.
C.G. Jung
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.
C.G. Jung
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
C.G. Jung
The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it.
C.G. Jung
If only a world-wide consciousness could arise that all division and fission are due to the splitting of opposites in the psyche, then we should know where to begin.
C.G. Jung
If I want to understand an individual human being, I must lay aside all scientific knowledge of the average man and discard all theories in order to adopt a completely new and unprejudiced attitude. I can only approach the task of understanding with a free and open mind, whereas knowledge of man, or insight into human character, presupposes all sorts of knowledge about mankind in general.
C.G. Jung
There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
C.G. Jung
In spite of our proud domination of nature, we are still her victims, for we have not even learned to control our nature.
C.G. Jung
I never think that I am the one who must see to it that cherries grow on stalks
C.G. Jung
It is the truth, a force of nature that expresses itself through me – I am only a channel – I can imagine in many instances where I would become sinister to you.For instance, if life had led you to take up an artificial attitude, then you wouldn't be able to stand me, because I am a natural being.By my very presence I crystallize; I am a ferment.The unconscious of people who live in an artificial manner senses me as a danger.Everything about me irritates them, my way of speaking, my way of laughing.They sense nature.
C.G. Jung
If you think along the lines of Nature then you think properly." from the video "Carl Jung speaks about death
C.G. Jung
We are still living in a wonderful new world where man thinks himself astonishingly new and "modern." This is unmistakable proof of the youthfulness of human consciousness, which has not yet grown aware of its historical antecedents.
C.G. Jung
In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden source in individuals.
C.G. Jung
In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden source in individuals.
C.G. Jung
The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
C.G. Jung
The biographies of great artists make it abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so imperious that it battens on their humanity and yokes everything to the service of the work, even at the cost of health and ordinary human happiness. The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle. The creative urge lives and grows in him like a tree in the earth from which it draws its nourishment.
C.G. Jung
The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image, and in elaborating and shaping this 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. Therein lies the social significance of art: it is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is most lacking.
C.G. Jung
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.
C.G. Jung
My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart.
C.G. Jung
My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you - are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again. Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. Do you still know me? How long the separation lasted! Everything has become so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths a good star has guided me to you? Give me your hand, my almost forgotten soul. How warm the joy at seeing you again, you long disavowed soul. Life has led me back to you. Let us thank the life I have lived for all the happy and all the sad hours, for every joy, for every sadness. My soul, my journey should continue with you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude.
C.G. Jung
The Wrong we have Done, Thought, or Intended Will wreak its Vengeance onOur SOULS.
C.G. Jung
I myself recently dreamed that a UFO came speeding towards me which turned out to be the lens of a magic lantern whose projected image was myself; this suggested to me that I was the figure, himself deep in meditation, who is produced by a meditating yogi.
C.G. Jung
They do not realize that a myth is dead if it no longer lives and grows. Our myth has become mute, and gives no answers.
C.G. Jung
The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.
C.G. Jung
We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.
C.G. Jung
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.
C.G. Jung
The girl dreams she is dangerously ill. Suddenly birds come out of her skin and cover her completely ... Swarms of gnats obscure the sun, the moon, and all the stars except one. That one start falls upon the dreamer.
C.G. Jung
Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.
C.G. Jung
Where your fear is,there is your task.
C.G. Jung
Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next.
C.G. Jung
But it seems to me to be an imperfection in things of beauty, and a weakness in man, if an explanation from the shallow-side has a destructive effect. The horror which we feel for Freudian interpretations is entirely due to our own barbaric or childish naivete, which believes that there can be heights without corresponding depths, and which blinds us to the really "final" truth that, when carried to extremes, opposites meet.
C.G. Jung
But it seems to me to be an imperfection in things of beauty, and a weakness in man, if an explanation from the shallow-side has a destructive effect. The horror which we feel for Freudian interpretations is entirely due to our own barbaric or childish naivete, which believes that there can be heights without corresponding depths, and which blinds us to the really "final" truth that, when carried to extremes, opposites meet.
C.G. Jung
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
C.G. Jung
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
C.G. Jung
Astrology is assured of recognition from psychology, without further restrictions, because astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity.
C.G. Jung
Christians often ask why God does not speak to them, as he is believed to have done in former days. When I hear such questions, it always makes me think of the rabbi who asked how it could be that God often showed himself to people in the olden days whereas nowadays nobody ever sees him. The rabbi replied: "Nowadays there is no longer anybody who can bow low enough."This answer hits the nail on the head. We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. The Buddhist discards the world of unconscious fantasies as useless illusions; the Christian puts his Church and his Bible between himself and his unconscious; and the rational intellectual does not yet know that his consciousness is not his total psyche.
C.G. Jung