Carl Jung Quotes

What was given to us by the past is adapted to the possibilities of the future.

The man who speaks with primordial images, speaks with a thousand tongues.

The doctor is effective only when he himself is affected. Only the wounded physician heals.

Sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality.

Criticism can be effective when there is something that must be destroyed or dissolved, but it is capable only of harm when there is something to be built.

The totality of the psyche can never be grasped by the intellect alone.

I readily admit that I have such a great respect for what happens in the human soul that I would be afraid of disturbing and distorting the silent operation of nature by clumsy interference.

For the alchemist the one primarily in need of redemption is not man, but the deity who is lost and sleeping in matter.

Music is the application of sounds to the canvas of silence.

Magic is the science of the jungle.

We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself.

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

Instinct is like Nature herself - prodigiously conservative, and yet transcending her own historical conditions in her acts of creation.

The Self then functions as a union of opposites and thus constitutes the most immediate experience of the Divine which it is psychologically possible to imagine

Only in our creative acts do we step forth into the light and see ourselves whole and complete.

So often among so-called "primitives" one comes across spiritual personalities who immediately inspire respect, as though they were the fully matured products of an undisturbed fate.

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.

In knowing ourselves to be unique, we possess the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite. But only then!

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual's faith into immediate relation with God.

The word 'belief' is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it - I don't need to believe it.

The upheaval of our world and the upheaval of our consciousness are one and the same.

The psychiatrist knows only too well how each of us becomes the helpless but not pitiable victim of his own sentiments. Sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality.

His retreat into himself is not a final renunciation of the world, but a search for quietude, where alone it is possible for him to make his contribution to the life of the community.

Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it.

The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.

No language exists that cannot be misused... Every Interpretation is hypothetical, for it is a mere attempt to read an unfamiliar text.

A sense of a wider meaning to one's existence is what raises a man beyond mere getting and spending. If he lacks this sense, he is lost and miserable.

Individualization does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself.

The symbol in the dream has more the value of a parable: it does not conceal, it teaches.

Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.

What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents have not lived

It is really the mistake of our age. We think it is enough to discover new things, but we don't realize that knowing more demands a cor­responding development of morality.

Eternal truth needs a human language that alters with the spirit of the times.

The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual.

The meaning and design of a problem seem not to lie in its solution, but in our working at it incessantly.

Whatever is not conscious will be experienced as fate.

I live in my deepest hell and from there I cannot fall any further.

A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction, with a consequent drain from some other side of life.

The psyche is a natural phenomenon. All aspects of the psyche, even those which seem pathological or destructive, actually serve the function of furthering our psychological development.

If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.

The dream is a series of images, which are apparently contradictory and nonsensical, but arise in reality from psychologic material which yields a clear meaning.

The world hangs on a thin thread, and that is the psyche of man.

Nature has no use for the plea that one 'did not know'.

I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love.

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life.

Language, in its origin and essence, is simply a system of signs or symbols that denote real occurrences or their echo in the human soul.

Fidelity to the law of your own being is an act of high courage flung in the face of life.

It is indeed time for the clergyman and the psychotherapist to join forces.

We cannot imagine events that are connected non-causally and are capable of a non-causal explanation. But that does not mean that such events do not exist.