Carl Jung Quotes

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. ”― Carl G. Jung

“Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune. ”― Carl Gustav Jung

“To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.”― C.G. Jung

“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.”― C.G. Jung

“The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“…anyone who attempts to do both, to adjust to his group and at the same time pursue his individual goal, becomes neurotic.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“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.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“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.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“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

“Faith, hope, love, and insight are the highest achievements of human effort. They are found-given-by experience.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“The girl dreams she is dangerously ill. Suddenly birds come out of her skin and cover her completely … Swarms of gnats obscure the sun, the moon, and all the stars except one. That one start falls upon the dreamer.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“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

“Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.”― C.G. Jung

“There is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are older than the historical man, which are inborn in him from the earliest times, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“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.”― Carl Jung

“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.”― Carl Jung

“Astrology is assured of recognition from psychology, without further restrictions, because astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity.”― C.G. Jung

“The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.”― Carl Jung

“The achievement of psychological maturity is an individual task-and so is increasingly difficult today when man’s individuality is threatened by widespread conformity.”― C.G. Jung

“You open the gates of the soul to let the dark flood of chaos flow into your order and meaning. If you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness.”― C.G. Jung

“God has fallen out of containment in religion and into human hearts—God is incarnating. Our whole unconscious is in an uproar from the God Who wants to know and to be known.”― C. G. Jung

“The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith.”
― Carl Jung

“My whole being was seeking for something still unknown which might confer meaning upon the banality of life.”― Carl Jung

“Deep down, below the surface of the average man’s conscience, he hears a voice whispering, “There is something not right,” no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or moral code.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“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

“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.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ — all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself — that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness — that I myself am the enemy who must be loved — what then? As a rule, the Christian’s attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us “Raca,” and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.”― C.G. Jung

“The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears.”― C.G. Jung

“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”― Carl Jung

“Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“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.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once, and cannot add up the sum. I am incapable of determining ultimate worth or worthlessness; I have no judgment about myself and my life. There is nothing I am quite sure about. I have no definite convictions – not about anything, really. I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation or something I do not know.”― C. G. Jung

“With a truly tragic delusion,” Carl Jung noted, “these theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing.”― Carl Jung

“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

“I am looking forward enormously to getting back to the sea again, where the overstimulated psyche can recover in the presence of that infinite peace and spaciousness.”― Carl Jung

“Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.”― C. G. Jung

“The Wrong we have Done, Thought, or Intended Will wreak its Vengeance on Our SOULS.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“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.”― Carl Jung

“When you are up against a wall, put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall and grow.”― C.G. Jung

“The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Every man carries within himself the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, a hereditary factor of primordial origin.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“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.”― Carl Jung

“My speech is imperfect. Not because I want to shine with words, but out of the impossibility of finding those words, I speak in images. With nothing else can I express the words from the depths.”― C.G. Jung

“I deliberately and consciously give preference to a dramatic, mythological way of thinking and speaking, because this is not only more expressive but also more exact than an abstract scientific terminology, which is wont to toy with the notion that its theoretic formulations may one fine day be resolved into algebraic equations.”― Carl Jung

“The doctor is effective only when he himself is affected. Only the wounded physician heals”
― C.G. Jung

“Man, as we realize if we reflect for a moment, never perceives anything fully or comprehends anything completely.”― C.G. Jung

“I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once and cannot add up the sum.”― Carl Jung

“We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.”― Carl Jung

“In such doubtful matters, where you have to work as a pioneer, you must be able to put some trust in your intuition and follow your feeling even at the risk of going wrong.”― C.G. Jung

“Had I left those images hidden in the emotions, I might have been torn to pieces by them.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason.”― Carl Jung

“Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“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.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“The sight of a child…will arouse certain longings in adult, civilized persons — longings which relate to the unfulfilled desires and needs of those parts of the personality which have been blotted out of the total picture in favor of the adapted persona.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“We are born at a given moment, in a given place, and like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how things are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Every human life contains a potential, if that potential is not fulfilled, then that life was wasted…”― Carl Gustav Jung

“If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. ”― Carl Gustav Jung

“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

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“There’s no coming to consciousness without pain.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.”― C.G. Jung

“The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Shame is a soul eating emotion.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.”― C.G. Jung

“We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.”― Carl Jung

“If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool”― C.G. Jung

“Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next.”― Carl Jung

“I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.”― Carl Jung

“What you resist, persists”― C.G. Jung

“We cannot change anything unless we accept it.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”― Carl Jung

“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”― Carl Gustav Jung

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”― C.G. Jung

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”― Carl Gustav Jung