A Few Carl Jung Quotations

I quite agree with you: without relatedness individuation is hardly possible. Relatedness begins with conversation mostly. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 609

It is always important to have something to bring into a relationship, and solitude is often the means by which you acquire it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 610.

You call up again Tertullian’s Christian anima of the first Roman centuries, which claimed to be the light that shineth in the darkness. What about the anima of our benighted days? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 610

The fact, too, that the subject of these visions is very old and in confinio mortis suggests that a glance has been cast beyond the border, or that something from the other side has seeped through into our three-dimensional world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 612.

Writing is a difficult question, since it is not only a blessing but also a bad temptation because it tickles the devil of self-importance. If you want to write something, you have to be quite sure that the whole of your being wants this kind of expression. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 612.

Milk, as lac virginis, virgin’s milk, is a synonym for the aqua doctrinae one of the aspects of Mercurius, who had already bedeviled the Bollingen stones in the form of the trickster. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 615.

Your equation of certain archetypal ideas with fundamental physiological processes has my undivided applause. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 619.

I am not in the least surprised when you say that the alchemical pairs of opposites can be correlated with the endophylactictrophotropic and the ergotrop-dynamic systems. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 619
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Abstract thinking can lead us no further than to intellectual sophistries, which are invariably used as shields and subterfuges and are calculated to prevent the realization of the whole. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 620

I would like to emphasize that it very often does not depend upon the use one makes of an image, but rather upon the use the archetypes make of ourselves, which decides the question whether it will be artistic creation or a change of religious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 626.

I see that many of my pupils indulge in a superstitious belief in our so-called ” free will” and pay little attention to the fact that the archetypes are, as a rule, autonomous entities, and not only material subject to our choice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 626.

In reply to your question about levitation I myself have never observed the levitation of a living body. But apparently such things do happen. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 627.

Although I have been studying the UFO phenomenon for about 12 years now and have read practically all the relevant literature, I a m still unable to form a satisfactory picture of it or to assert that anything adequate is known about the nature of Ufos. I cannot even say whether they exist or not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 628.

The theologian, the only person besides the psychotherapist to declare himself responsible for the cura animarum, is afraid of having to think psychologically about the objects of his belief. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 629.

His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 624.

You see, alcohol in Latin is spiritus and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 625.

All in all Nietzsche was to me the only man of that time who gave some adequate answers to certain urgent questions which then were more felt than thought. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 622.

This gives me great satisfaction, because what alone has always mattered to me was to find out whether my way of looking at things is in accord with life or not. ~Carl Jung, Collected Letters Vol. II, Page 543

If there’s one thing that terrified me, it was dead conceptualism. ~Carl Jung, Collected Letters Vol. II, Page 543

In dealing with darkness you have got to cling to the Good, otherwise the devil devours you. You need every bit of your goodness in dealing with Evil and just there. To keep the light alive in the darkness, that’s the point, and only there your candle makes sense. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 135.

In a very generalizing way we can therefore define them [Archetypes] as attributes of the creator. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 606.

The essential thing about these [Synchronistic] phenomena is that an objective event coincides meaningfully with a psychic process; that is to say, a physical event and an endopsychic one have a common meaning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 27.

If you have committed a mistake at all, it consisted in your having striven too hard to understand your wife completely and not reckoning with the fact that in the end people don’t want to know what secrets are slumbering in their souls. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 27.

If nevertheless you are still tormented by guilt feelings, then consider for once what sins you have not committed which you would have liked to commit. This might perhaps cure you of your guilt feelings toward your wife. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 27.

There can be no doubt that the unconscious comes to the surface in modern art and with its dynamism destroys the orderliness that is characteristic of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 81

All the riches I seem to possess are also my poverty, my lonesomeness in the world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516.

The more I seem to possess, the more I stand to lose, when I get ready to approach the dark gate. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516.

I did not seek my life with its failures and accomplishments. It came on me with a power not my own. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516.

I don’t believe [in a personal God], but I do know of a power of a very personal nature and an irresistible influence. I call it “God.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 274

From the psychological standpoint religion is a psychic phenomenon which irrationally exists, like the fact of our physiology or anatomy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 271

If this [Religious] function is lacking, man as an individual lacks balance, because religious experience is an expression of the existence and function of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 271

This psychological definition of God has nothing to do with Christian dogma, but it does describe the experience of the Other, often a very uncanny opponent, which coincides in the most impressive way with the historical “experiences of God.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 272.

The only right and legitimate way to such an experience is that it happens to you in reality, and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 624.

The only right and legitimate way to such an experience is that it happens to you in reality, and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 624.

An ordinary man, not protected by an action from above, and isolated in society, cannot resist the power of evil, which is called very aptly the Devil. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 624.

One can only say that somehow one has to reach the rim of the world or get to the end of one’s tether in order to partake of the terror or grace of such an [Primordial] experience at all. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 424.

Its nature is such that it is really understandable why the Church is actually a place of refuge or protection for those who cannot endure the fire of the divine presence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 424.

I profess no “belief.” I know that there are experiences one must pay “religious” attention to. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 517

The word religio comes from religere, according to the ancient view, and not from the patristic religare. The former means “to consider or observe carefully.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 517

This derivation gives religio the right empirical basis, namely, the religious conduct of life, as distinct from mere credulity and imitation, which are either religion at second hand or substitutes for religion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 517

Deviation from the numen seems to be universally understood as being the worst and the most original sin. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol, II, Page 370.

Since neurosis is an attitudinal problem, and the attitude depends on, or is grounded in, certain “dominants,” i.e., the ultimate and highest ideas and principles, the problem of attitude can fairly be characterized as a religious one. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 56.

They [Archetypes] are primordial psychic experiences which very often give patients access again to blocked religious truths. I have also had this experience myself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 57.

Religious ideas and convictions from the beginning of history have the aspect of the mental pharmakon [pharmacy]. They represent the world of wholeness in which fragments can be gathered and put together again. Such a cure cannot be effected by pills and injections. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 625.

Therefore I speak of the beatipossidentes [those blessed with being able to believe] of belief, and this is what I reproach them with: that they exalt themselves above our human stature and our human limitation and won’t admit to pluming themselves on a possession which distinguishes them from the ordinary mortal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 376.

I confess with the confession of not knowing and not being able to know; believers start with the assertion of knowing and being able to know. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 376.

Although the divine incarnation is a cosmic and absolute event, it only manifests empirically in those relatively few individuals capable of enough consciousness to make ethical decisions, that is, to decide for the Good. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 314.

His [God’s] moral quality depends upon individuals. That is why He incarnates. Individuation and individual existence are indispensable for the transformation of God the Creator. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 314.

Instead of the propitiating praise to an unpredictable king or the child’s prayer to a loving father, the responsible living and fulfilling of the divine will in us will be our form of worship and commerce with God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 316.

Man has already received so much knowledge that he can destroy his own planet. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 316.

Let us hope that God’s good spirit will guide him in his decisions, because it will depend upon man’s decision whether God’s creation will continue. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 316.

But nobody has ever heard that the devil departed this life afterwards; on the contrary, the authentic New Testament view is that after the thousand year reign of Christ he shall be loosed again on earth in all his youthful freshness, in the form of Antichrist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 253.