C. G. Jung Quotes

#1. Freedom of will is the ability to do gladly that which I must do.

C. G. Jung

#2. Slavery and rebellion are inseparable correlates. Hence, rivalry for power and exaggerated distrust pervade the entire organism from top to bottom.

C. G. Jung

#3. It is the face of his own evil shadow that grins at Western man from the other side of the Iron curtain.

C. G. Jung

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

C. G. Jung

#5. It would be a ridiculous and unwarranted presumption on our part if we imagined that we were more energetic or more intelligent than the men of the past - our material knowledge has increased, but not our intelligence.

C. G. Jung

#6. In general, the heart seems to have a more reliable memory for what benefits the psyche than does the head, which has a rather unhealthy tendeny to lead an 'abstract' existence, and easily forgets that its consciousness is snuffed out the moment the heart fails its duty.

C. G. Jung

#7. That the gods die from time to time is due to man's sudden discovery that they do not mean anything, that they are made by human hands, useless idols of wood and stone.

C. G. Jung

#8. If it be true that there can be no metaphysics transcending human reason, it is no less true that there can be no empirical knowledge that is not already caught and limited by the a priori structure of cognition.

C. G. Jung

#9. In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us.

C. G. Jung

#10. 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.

C. G. Jung

#11. You do not have an inferior function, it has you.

C. G. Jung

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

C. G. Jung

#13. In so far as society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individualists.

C. G. Jung

#14. Words are animals, alive with a will of their own

C. G. Jung

#15. Like all numinous contents, they have a tendency to self-amplification, that is to say they form the nuclei for an aggregation of synonyms. These

C. G. Jung

#16. At first we cannot see beyond the path that leads downward to dark and hateful things but no light or beauty will ever come from the man who cannot bear this sight. Light is always born of darkness, and the sun never yet stood still in heaven to satisfy man's longing or to still his fears.

C. G. Jung

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

C. G. Jung

#18. In contrast to the subjectivism of the conscious mind the unconscious is objective, manifesting itself mainly in the form of contrary feelings, fantasies, emotions, impulses and dreams, none of which one makes oneself but which come upon one objectively. Even

C. G. Jung

#19. Indeed, I do not forget that my voice is but one voice, my experience a mere drop in the sea, my knowledge no greater than the visual field in a microscope, my mind's eye a mirror that reflects a small corner of the world, and my ideas
a subjective confession.

C. G. Jung

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

C. G. Jung

#21. The highest, most decisive experience is to be alone with one's own self. You must be alone to find out what supports you, when you find that you can not support yourself. Only this experience can give you an indestructible foundation.

C. G. Jung

#22. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor.

C. G. Jung

#23. I have never since entirely freed myself of the impression that this life is a segment of existence which is enacted in a three-dimensional boxlike universe especially set up for it.

C. G. Jung

#24. Too much of the animal disfigures the civilized human being, too much culture makes a sick animal.

C. G. Jung

#25. You do not overcome the old teaching through doing less, but through doing more. Every step closer to my soul excites the scornful laughter of my devils, those cowardly ear-whisperers and poison-mixers. It was easy for them to laugh, since I had to do strange things.

C. G. Jung

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

C. G. Jung

#27. [The figure of the Trickster] is the collective shadow.

C. G. Jung

#28. 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

#29. Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his Notebooks: It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places in which ... you may find really marvelous ideas.

C. G. Jung

#30. Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

C. G. Jung

#31. The true leader is always led.

C. G. Jung

#32. If You Pay Close Attention, You will See that the Most Masculine Man has a Feminine Soul, and the Most Feminine Woman has a Masculine Soul.

C. G. Jung

#33. Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth.
If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light.

C. G. Jung

#34. I have evidently taken on a completely monstrous form in which I can no longer recognize myself. It

C. G. Jung

#35. You should mock yourself and rise above this.

C. G. Jung

#36. Our past thinking has determined our present status, and our present thinking will determine our future status; for man is what man thinks.

C. G. Jung

#37. 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

#38. The more one sees of human fate and the more one examines its secret springs of action, the more one is impressed by the strength of unconscious motives and by the limitations of free choice

C. G. Jung

#39. Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.

C. G. Jung

#40. One cannot live from anything except what one is.

C. G. Jung

#41. In fact, the terrors that stem from our elaborate civilization may be far more threatening than those that primitive people attribute to demons. The

C. G. Jung

#42. Somewhere, right at the bottom of one's own being, one generally does know where one should go and what one should do. But there are times when the clown we call "I" behaves in such a distracting fashion that the inner voice cannot make its presence felt.

C. G. Jung

#43. Even a scientist is a human being, and it is quite natural that he, like others, hates the things he cannot explain and thus falls victim to the common illusion that what we know today represents the highest summit of knowledge.

C. G. Jung

#44. The next day he went to the archbishop and told him that he was resolved to go out into the world to preach the gospel of God's unending mercy.

C. G. Jung

#45. Only in the first hour of the night can I become human, while the male dove is busy with the twelve dead.'
Black Book 2

C. G. Jung

#46. It is not an "imitation of Christ" but its exact opposite: an assimilation of the Christ-image to his own self, which is the "true man."349 It is no longer an effort, an intentional straining after imitation, but rather an involuntary experience of the reality represented by the sacred legend. This

C. G. Jung

#47. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force

C. G. Jung

#48. All the higher grades of science, imagination and intuition play an increasingly important role over and above intellect and its capacity for application.

C. G. Jung

#49. My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart.

C. G. Jung

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

C. G. Jung

#51. A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his daimon.

C. G. Jung

#52. 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

C. G. Jung

#53. The dream gives a true picture of the subjective state, while the conscious mind denies that this state exists, or recognizes it only grudgingly.

C. G. Jung

#54. Space flights are merely an escape, a fleeing away from oneself, because it is easier to go to Mars or to the moon than it is to penetrate one's own being.

C. G. Jung

#55. People go on blithely organizing and believing in the remedy of mass action, without the least consciousness of the fact that the most powerful organizations can be maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans.

C. G. Jung

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

C. G. Jung

#57. The symbol-producing function of our dreams is an attempt to bring our original mind back to consciousness, where it has never been before, and where it has never undergone critical self-reflection. We have been that mind, but we have never known it.

C. G. Jung

#58. the soul said, "Is this what you think it means to be human?

C. G. Jung

#59. One who looks outside, dreams. One who looks inside, awakens.

C. G. Jung

#60. 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

#61. I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God.

C. G. Jung

#62. I wandered for many years, so long that I forgot that I possessed a soul.48 Where were you all this time? Which Beyond sheltered you and gave you sanctuary? Oh, that you must speak through me, that my speech and I are your symbol and expression! How should I decipher you?

C. G. Jung

#63. Image is psyche.

C. G. Jung

#64. Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists ... But 'the heart glows,' and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being.

C. G. Jung

#65. 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

#66. 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.

C. G. Jung

#67. Sentimentality is the supestructure erected upon brutality.

C. G. Jung

#68. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead. It

C. G. Jung

#69. There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.

C. G. Jung

#70. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names.

C. G. Jung

#71. The rupture between faith and knowledge is a symptom of the split consciousness which is so characteristic of the mental disorder of our day.

C. G. Jung

#72. Whatever we look at, and however we look at it, we see only through our own eyes.

C. G. Jung

#73. Synchronicity could be understood as an ordering system by means of which "similar" things coincide, without there being any apparent cause.

C. G. Jung

#74. one form of life cannot simply be abandon unless it is exchanged for another

C. G. Jung

#75. But there is no energy unless there is a tension of opposites; hence it is necessary to discover the opposite to the attitude of the conscious mind.

C. G. Jung

#76. I had to follow the ineradicable foolishness which furnishes the steps to true wisdom.

C. G. Jung

#77. Opposites, no judgment can be considered to be final

C. G. Jung

#78. 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

#79. The subject of transformation is not the empirical man, however much he may identify with the "old Adam," but Adam the Primordial Man, the archetype within us. The

C. G. Jung

#80. I don't aspire to be a good man. I aspire to be a whole man.

C. G. Jung

#81. We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.

C. G. Jung

#82. I have always been impressed by the fact that there are a surprising number of individuals who never use their minds if they can avoid it, and an equal number who do use their minds, but in an amazingly stupid way.

C. G. Jung

#83. The serious problems in life ... are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly.

C. G. Jung

#84. Every Mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother and every mother extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter.

C. G. Jung

#85. If we feel our way into the human secrets of the sick person, the madness also reveals its system, and we recognize in the mental illness merely an exceptional reaction to emotional problems which are not strange to us.
The Content of the Psychoses

C. G. Jung

#86. We are the great danger. Psyche is the great danger. How important is to know something about it, but we know nothing about it.

C. G. Jung

#87. Faith, hope, love, and insight are the highest achievements of human effort. They are found-given-by experience.

C. G. Jung

#88. 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

#89. Jung's search for the soul, then, stands at one with the search for appropriately dialogical and differentiated language.

C. G. Jung

#90. Only what is really oneself has the power to heal.

C. G. Jung

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

C. G. Jung

#92. There is good reason for supposing that the archetypes are the unconscious images of the instincts themselves, in other words, that they are patterns of instinctual behaviour.

C. G. Jung

#93. As understanding deepens, the further removed it becomes from knowledge.

C. G. Jung

#94. I am not what happens to me. I choose who I become.

C. G. Jung

#95. Nobody can spare themselves the waiting and most will be unable to bear this torment, but will throw themselves with greed back at men, things, and thoughts, whose slaves they will become

C. G. Jung

#96. My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.

C. G. Jung

#97. When religion stops talking about animals it will be all downhill.

C. G. Jung

#98. There is no difference in principle between organic and psychic growth. As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols.

C. G. Jung

#99. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

C. G. Jung

#100. Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche.

C. G. Jung