Carl Jung Quotations

A dog does not know that it is a dog any more than a star knows that it is a star. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Pages 217-223

We can hardly predict today what the artist is going to bring forth, but always a great religion has gone hand in hand with a great art. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 61

I used the same technique [Active Imagination] of the descent, but this time I went much deeper. The first time I should say I reached a depth of about one thousand feet, but this time it was a cosmic depth. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 68

Psychologically, however, the archetype as an image of instinct is a spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives; it is the sea to which all rivers wend their way, the prize which the hero wrests from the fight with the dragon. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 415

When one gets an intuition of the collective unconscious, if there is any creative power in the individual a definite figure is formed, rather than that the material comes through in a fragmentary form. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 71

When an artist has a figure from the collective unconscious, he at once begins to play with it esthetically, and usually makes some concretization of it as a monument, etc. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 71

When one assumes a perceptional attitude toward one’s unconscious, an attitude often to be observed in certain intuitives, one makes no effort to assimilate the material into the personality. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 73

Our effort today should be the double one of consciousness plus a full participation in life. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 73

If you leave all your energy and will in the superior function you slowly go to hell—it sucks you dry. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74

I had the feeling that I was an over-compensated psychosis, and from this feeling I was not released till August 1st, 1914. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 48

Such a situation presented itself at the time of the spread of Christianity two thousand years ago. The spiritual values had at that time sunk into the unconscious, and in order to realize them again, people had to go to tremendous lengths in the repudiation of material values. Gold, women, art—all had to be given up. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74

We seek life, not efficiency, and this seeking of ours is directly against the collective ideals of our times. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74

Only those who have energy enough, or who have been gripped in spite of themselves, can go through this process, but once in it you have to bleed for it. It is a process that is going on all over the world today. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74

These people in the early Christian era were unaware of the general movement contemporaneous with them. They could not realize they were Christians, yet they were seeking initiation into all sorts of mysteries in search of the thing Christianity was offering. They could not accept it because of its origin in the hands of despised peoples. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 75

Most of the troubles of our times come from this lack of realization that we are part of a herd that has deviated from the main currents. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 75