Carl Jung (1875–1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, psychology, and religious studies.
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| Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. ― Carl Jung |
Here is a collection of Carl Jung most famous quotes: Carl Jung Quotes about self, love, happiness, the soul, psychology, dreams, darkness and psychiatry. Quotes and sayings on learning, intelligence, perception, morality, knowing-others, reason, self-awareness, childhood, self-love, enlightenment, shadow and truth by Carl Jung.
Carl Jung Quotes and Sayings
Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.
I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.
The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
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.
One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. 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.
The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
The word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
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| The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. ― Carl 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.
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
There's no coming to consciousness without pain.
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.
Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.
No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.
The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.
The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images.
Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.
Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge.
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.
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| Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. ― Carl Jung |
Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event.
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.
We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.
We cannot change anything unless we accept it.
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.
Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.
The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.
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.
We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.
The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.
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.
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.
Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
There is no coming to consciousness without pain.
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| A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment. ― Carl 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.
Shame is a soul eating emotion.
Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?
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.
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.
For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.
The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.
The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.
Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.
The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.
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.
It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.
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.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
In my case Pilgrim's Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.
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| We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. ― Carl Jung |
Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.
Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one's being, but by integration of the contraries.
Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.
Sensation tell us a thing is. Thinking tell us what it is this thing is. Feeling tells us what this thing is to us.
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.
I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.
Every human life contains a potential, if that potential is not fulfilled, then that life was wasted.
We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.
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.
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
Anyone who attempts to do both, to adjust to his group and at the same time pursue his individual goal, becomes neurotic.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.
We shall probably get nearest to the truth if we think of the conscious and personal psyche as resting upon the broad basis of an inherited and universal psychic disposition which is as such unconscious, and that our personal psyche bears the same relation to the collective psyche as the individual to society.
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
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.
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| The world will ask you who you are, and if you don't know, the world will tell you. ― 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.
What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved - what then?
Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.
My whole being was seeking for something still unknown which might confer meaning upon the banality of life.
Without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.
The true leader is always led.
In each of us there is another whom we do not know.
If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.
There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.
If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.
I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.
Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next.
The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.
The fool is the precursor to the savior.
Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.
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| Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge. ― Carl Jung |
People don't have ideas. Ideas have people.
We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate; it oppresses.
The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith.
I don't aspire to be a good man. I aspire to be a whole man.
Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.
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.
Words are animals, alive with a will of their own.
Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.
Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.
When an inner situation is not made conscious it appears outside as fate.
Sometimes you have to do something unforgivable just to be able to go on living.
The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual becomes.
Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.
A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his daimon.
Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.
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| We are not what happened to us, we are what we wish to become. ― Carl 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.
Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.
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.
Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason.
It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.
Nobody, as long as he moves among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.
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.
A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.
We are not what happened to us, we are what we wish to become.
Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.
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.
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.
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.
The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.
Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.
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| You are what you do, not what you say you'll do. ― Carl Jung |
Had I left those images hidden in the emotions, I might have been torn to pieces by them.
The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive.
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.
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.
Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.
Faith, hope, love, and insight are the highest achievements of human effort. They are found-given by experience.
Where your fear is, there is your task.
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.
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a 'continent,' a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.
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.
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.
Intuition is perception via the unconscious.
Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his Notebooks: "It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places in which.... you may find really marvelous ideas."
Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.
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| Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. ― Carl Jung |
An old alchemist gave the following consolation to one of his disciples: "No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you."
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.
One who looks outside, dreams. One who looks inside, awakens.
We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.
Creative power is mightier than its possessor.
The wrong we have done, thought, or intended will wreak its vengeance on our souls.
The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world's answer.
For better to come, good must stand aside.
Sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality.
Man cannot stand a meaningless life.
Everyone knows nowadays that people "have complexes". What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.
The doctor is effective only when he himself is affected. Only the wounded physician heals.
Man, as we realize if we reflect for a moment, never perceives anything fully or comprehends anything completely.
The sure path can only lead to death.
What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits.
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| People don't have ideas. Ideas have people. ― Carl Jung |
The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love.
What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate.
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.
Nature has no use for the plea that one "did not know".
But, if you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself.
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.
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.
Real liberation comes not from glossing over or repressing painful states of feeling, but only from experiencing them to the full.
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.
Whatever we look at, and however we look at it, we see only through our own eyes.
Psychological or spiritual development always requires a greater capacity for anxiety and ambiguity.
Astrology is assured of recognition from psychology, without further restrictions, because astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity.
What is essential in a work of art is that it should rise far above the realm of personal life and speak from the spirit and heart of the poet as man to the spirit and heart of mankind.
Were it not for the leaping and twinkling of the soul, man would rot away in his greatest passion, idleness.
To be "normal" is a splendid ideal for the unsuccessful.
I am a symbol of my soul.
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.
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.
The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.
The life that I could still live, I should live, and the thoughts that I could still think, I should think.
The achievement of psychological maturity is an individual task-and so is increasingly difficult today when man's individuality is threatened by widespread conformity.
Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.
The creative mind plays with the object it loves.
Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.
The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.
My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.
If you go to thinking take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you. Love is empty without thinking, thinking hollow without love.
The time is a critical one, for it marks the beginning of the second half of life, when a metanoia, a mental transformation, not infrequently occurs.
Everyone is in love with his own ideas.
Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.
Synchronicity is the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that cannot be explained by cause and effect and that is meaningful to the observer.
I am not what happens to me. I choose who I become.
Fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt.
The psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual.
At first we cannot see beyond the path that leads downward to dark and hateful things but no light or beauty will ever come from the man who cannot bear this sight. Light is always born of darkness, and the sun never yet stood still in heaven to satisfy man's longing or to still his fears.
If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences―and infer the motivation.
Our suffering comes from our unlived life - the unseen, unfelt parts of our psyche.
I must learn to love you.
A true symbol appears only when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt.
Man becomes whole, integrated, calm, fertile, and happy when (and only when) the process of individuation is complete, when the conscious and the unconscious have learned to live at peace and to complement one another.
But there is no energy unless there is a tension of opposites; hence it is necessary to discover the opposite to the attitude of the conscious mind.
Everybody acts out a myth, but very few people know what their myth is. And you should know what your myth is because it might be a tragedy and maybe you don't want it to be.
All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
I feel it is the duty of one who goes his own way to inform society of what he finds on his voyage of discovery.
Much of the evil in this world is due to the fact that man, in general, is hopelessly unconscious.
The stone has no uncertainties, no urge to communicate, and is eternally the same for thousands of years, while I am only a passing phenomenon which bursts into all kinds of emotions, like a flame that flares up quickly and then goes out.
The world will ask who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.
The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious.
I have never since entirely freed myself of the impression that this life is a segment of existence which is enacted in a three-dimensional boxlike universe especially set up for it.
How difficult it is to reach anything approaching a moderate and relatively calm point of view in the midst of one's emotions.
One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games.
We are the great danger. Psyche is the great danger. How important is to know something about it, but we know nothing about it.
Freedom of will is the ability to do gladly that which I must do.
It is only the things we don't understand that have any meaning. Man woke up in a world he did not understand, and that is why he tries to interpret it.
Depression is like a woman in black. If she turns up, don't shoo her away. Invite her in, offer her a seat, treat her like a guest and listen to what she wants to say.
What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.
We should grow like a tree that likewise does not know its law. We tie ourselves up with intentions, not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the exclusion of life.
Only what is really oneself has the power to heal.
Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.
Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us.
The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life - form ― an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other.
As understanding deepens, the further removed it becomes from knowledge.
It would be a ridiculous and unwarranted presumption on our part if we imagined that we were more energetic or more intelligent than the men of the past―our material knowledge has increased, but not our intelligence.
To make what fate intends for me my own intention.
The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.
Is it worth the lion's while to terrify the mouse?
One book opens another.
I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time.
Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?
To be normal is the ideal aim for the unsuccessful.
I early arrived at the insight that when no answer comes from within to the problems and complexities of life, they ultimately mean very little. Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience.
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.
The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual.
Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.
Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows. There are many who need the shadows and not the light.
The mind that is collectively orientated is quite incapable of thinking and feeling in any other way than by projection.
We are always human and we should never forget the burden of being only human.
The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains itself in equilibrium as the body does.
There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.
We can keep from a child all knowledge of earlier myths, but we cannot take from him the need for mythology.
The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.
The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.