C.G. Jung Quotes

The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole.

Envy does not allow humanity to sleep.

Man is the mirror God holds up to himself, the sense organ with which he apprehends his being.

One cannot free oneself by bowing to the yoke, but by breaking it.

Once upon a time men were possessed by devils. Now they are not less obsessed by ideas

Psychological type is nothing static - it changes in the course of life.

I am this bundle of what has been, and what has been accomplished.

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

But the meaning of life is not . . . explained by one's business life, nor is the deep desire of the human heart answered by a bank account.

Liverpool is the pool of life, it makes to live.

That which compels us to create a substitute for ourselves is not the external lack of objects, but our incapacity to lovingly include a thing outside of ourselves

A 'scream' is always just that - a noise and not music.

A purely psychological explanation is ruled out... the discs show signs of intelligent guidance, by quasi-human pilots.

I remember when my mother pointed to a stone, and she said this was the kind of stone people used to place on the feet of the baby girls to stop them trying to climb away and unbind their feet.

China is more prosperous than before. The people have better lives but they are not happy and confident because the scars are still there.

What has marked Chinese society is its level of cruelty, not just revolutions and wars. We ought to reject it totally, otherwise in another upheaval there will be further cruelty.

Creative power is mightier than its possessor.

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.

Every living soul has different talents, different desires, different faculties. Be yourself, for even if you deceive the entire world, you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.

We want to have certainties and no doubts- results and no experiments- without even seeing that certainties can arise only through doubt and results only thorough experiment.

Words are animals, alive with a will of their own

But we must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life; that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts.

Everyone is in love with his own ideas

To me dreams are part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive but expresses something as best it can.

Imagination is a concentrated extract of all the forces of life.

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.