Carl Jung Quotations
For him who looks backwards the whole world, even the starry sky, becomes the mother who bends over him and enfolds him on all sides, and from the renunciation of this image, and of the longing for it arises the picture of the world as we know it today. ~Carl Jung; The Sacrifice; CW 5; Par 643.
The psyche does not merely react; it gives its own specific answer to the influences at work upon it. ~Carl Jung; Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis; CW 4; par. 665.
Sensation must be strictly differentiated from feeling, since the latter is an entirely different process, although it may associate itself with sensation as “feeling-tone.” Sensation is related not only to external stimuli but to inner ones, i.e., to changes in the internal organic processes. [Definitions,” CW 6, par. 792.]
One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves. ~Jung and the Story of Our Time, Laurens van der Post (1977)
History is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood. ~Carl Jung; Woman in Europe.
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.
While studying astrology I have applied it to concrete cases many times. … The experiment is most suggestive to a versatile mind, unreliable in the hands of the unimaginative, and dangerous in the hands of a fool, as those intuitive methods always are. . . . It is an apt tool only when used intelligently. ~Carl Jung
No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that “God” is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.
In every adult there lurks a child–an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the personality which wants to develop and become whole. -C. G. Jung CW 17: 286
Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!
Nothing so promotes the growth of consciousness as [the] inner confrontation of opposites.” ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 345.
The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 137.
Give no guarantee of objective knowledge. What we do not understand in ourselves we do not understand in the other person either. So there is plenty to ensure that his image will be for the most part subjective. As we know, even an intimate friendship is no guarantee of objective knowledge. – Carl Jung; General Aspects of Dreams Psychology” (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.508
I regret many follies which sprang from my obstinacy; but without that trait I would not have reached my goal. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 358
If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely. But loneliness is not necessarily inimical to companionship, for no one is more sensitive to companionship than the lonely man, and companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 356.
“All my writings may be considered tasks imposed from within, their source was a fateful compulsion. What I wrote were things that assailed me from within myself. I permitted the spirit that moved me to speak out.” ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 222.
I have also realized that one must accept the thoughts that go on within oneself of their own accord as part of one’s reality. The categories of true and false are, of course, always present; but because they are not binding they take second place. The presence of thoughts is more important than our subjective judgment of them. But neither must these judgments be suppressed, for they also are existent thoughts which are part of our wholeness. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 298.
Man always has some mental reservation, even in the face of divine decrees. Otherwise, where would be his freedom? And what would be the use of that freedom if it could not threaten Him who threatens it? ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 220
The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith. The ones who came to me were the lost sheep. Even in this day and age the believer has the opportunity, in his church, to live the “symbolic life.” ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 140.
In science I missed the factor of meaning; and in religion, that of empiricism. Science met, to a very large extent, the needs of No. i personality, whereas the humane or historical studies provided beneficial instruction for No. 2. ~ Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Page 72
It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else. ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 72
“The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual.” ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 10.
The unconscious is useless without the human mind. It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny. ~Carl Jung; C.G. Jung Letters; Vol. 1; Page 283.
To be “normal” is the ideal aim for the unsuccessful, for all those who are still below the general level of adaptation. But for people of more than average ability, people who never found it difficult to gain successes and to accomplish their share of the world’s work-for them the moral compulsion to be nothing but normal signifies the bed of Procrustes-deadly and insupportable boredom, a hell of sterility and hopelessness. ~Carl Jung; CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; P. 161.
Instinct is anything but a blind and indefinite impulse, since it proves to be attuned and adapted to a definite external situation. This latter circumstance gives it its specific and irreducible form. Just as instinct is original and hereditary, so too, its form is age-old, that is to say, archetypal. It is even older and more conservative than the body’s form. ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 49.
Just as the body bears the traces of its phylogenetic development, so also does the human mind. Hence there is nothing surprising about the possibility that the figurative language of dreams is a survival from an archaic mode of thought. ~Carl Jung; General Aspects of Dream Psychology; and CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche; Page 475.
When one reflects upon what consciousness really is, one is profoundly impressed by the extreme wonder of the fact that an event which takes place outside in the cosmos simultaneously produces an internal image, that it takes place, so to speak, inside as well, which is to say: becomes conscious. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 394 and Basel Seminar, privately printed, 1934, p. 1.
. . . there are millions . . . who have lost faith in any kind of religion. Such people do not understand their religion any longer. While life runs smoothly without religion . . . when suffering comes, it is another matter. That is when people seek a way out and to reflect about the meaning of life and its bewildering and painful experiences. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 75
Hence one could say —cum grano salis —that history could be constructed just as easily from one’s own unconscious as from the actual texts. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 86.
The intellect may be the devil , but the devil is the “strange son of chaos” who can most readily be trusted to deal effectively with his mother. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 90.
Dionysus is the abyss of impassioned dissolution, where all human distinctions are merged in the animal divinity of the primordial psyche—a blissful and terrible experience. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 90.
But the principle of the unconscious is the autonomy of the psyche itself, reflecting in the play of its images not the world but itself, even though it utilizes the illustrative possibilities offered by the sensible world in order to make its images clear. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 146
And just as the material of the body that is ready for life has need of the psyche in order to be capable of life, so the psyche presupposes the living body in order that its images may live. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 325, Para 618.
This living being appears outwardly as the material body, but inwardly as a series of images of the vital activities taking place within it. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 325, Para 619.
Jesus-Mani-Buddha-Lao-tse are for me the four pillars of the temple of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Volume 1, Page 65.
God needs man in to become conscious, just as he needs limitation in time and space. Let us therefore be for him limitation in time and space an earthly tabernacle. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Volume 1, Page 65.
An autobiography is so difficult to write because we possess no standards, no objective foundation, from which to judge ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 3.
Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a whole. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 3.
Consciousness is essentially the psyche’s organ of perception, it is the eye and ear of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 98.
The religion of love was the exact psychological counterpart to the Roman devil-worship of power. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Pages 180-181, Paras 308-309.
We must read the Bible or we shall not understand psychology. Our psychology, whole lives, our language and imagery are built upon the Bible. ~Carl Jung, The Visions Seminar Vol. 1; Page 156.
Suffering is the swiftest steed that bears you to perfection. ~Meister Eckhart cited in Edinger’s The New God Image, Page 162.
Individuals who believe they are masters of their fate are as a rule the slaves of destiny. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 520-523
God is not blessed in his Godhead, he must be born in man forever. ~ Meister Eckhart
I had to understand that I was unable to make the people see what I am after. I am practically alone. There are a few who understand this and that, but almost nobody sees the whole….I have failed in my foremost task: to open people’s eyes to the fact that man has a soul and there is a buried treasure in the field and that our religion and philosophy are in a lamentable state. Quoted by Gerhard Adler in “Aspects of Jung’s Personality,” in Psychological Perspectives 6/1 (Spring 1975), p. 14.
Individuation and individual existence are indispensable for the transformation of God the Creator. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 312-316.
It is as if we are more inclined to ask the unknown ‘What shall I do?,’ while the East prefers the question: ‘To what total order does my conduct belong? ~Marie Louise Von Franz, Number and Time, p. 120.
We have become participants in the divine nature. We are the vessel…of the deity suffering in the body of the “slave”(Phil. 2:5). ~ ~Carl Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, 336, 409, Letters II, 314ff.
The ego participates in God’s suffering. ~Carl Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, 336, 409, Letters II, 314ff.
Yahweh and Allah are unreflected God-images, whereas in the Clementine Homilies there is a psychological and reflective spirit at work. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Page 54n.
Man’s suffering does not derive from his sins but from the maker of his imperfections, the paradoxical God. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Par. 1681
The only thing that really matters now is whether man can climb up to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness, in order to be equal to the superhuman powers which the fallen angels have played into his hands. ~Carl Jung, Answer to Job, Para 746.
The inner instability of Yahweh is the prime cause not only of the creation of the world, but also of the pleromatic drama for which mankind serves as a tragic chorus. . . . the two main climaxes are formed first by the Job tragedy and secondly by Ezekiel’s revelation. ~Carl Jung, Answer to Job, Para 686.
It does not seem to fit God’s purpose to exempt man from conflict and hence from evil. ~Carl Jung, Answer to Job, Para 659.
It was the tragedy of my youth to see my father cracking up before my eyes on the problem of his faith and dying and early death. ~Carl Jung to Pastor Walter Bernet, Letters Volume 2, Page 275
We cannot receive the Holy Spirit unless we have accepted our own individual life as Christ accepted his. Thus we become the “sons of god” fated to experience the conflict of the divine opposites, represented by the crucifixion. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, par. 1551.
[There is a] . . . continued and progressive divine incarnation. Thus man is received and integrated into the divine drama. He seems destined to play a decisive part in it; that is why he must receive the Holy Spirit. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, par. 1551.
If Jung were to obtain the professorship without the administrative duties, it would of course be a huge gain for us, but I think that he himself regards it as improbable. ~Sigmund Freud to Oskar Pfister, Feb 5, 1912.
If ego consciousness follows its own road exclusively, it is trying to become like a god or a superman. But exclusive recognition of its dependence only leads to a childish fatalism and to a world-negating and misanthropic spiritual arrogance. ~Carl Jung, The Mysteries: Papers from the Eranos, Page 324.
The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 325.
The divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding . . . as punishment, torment, death, and transfiguration. ~Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies, CW 13, par. 139.
He said “My kingdom is not of this world.” But “kingdom” it was, all the same. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, p. 97.
It is even very important that the anima is projected into the earth, that she descends very low, for otherwise her ascent to the heavenly condition in the form of Sophia has no meaning…She is the one that is rooted in the earth as well as in the heaven, both root and branch of the tree. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 533.