Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Quotes

• We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

• Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

• The word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

• 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.

• The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

• 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.

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

• 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.

• 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.

• Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

• No nation keeps its word. A nation is a big, blind worm, following what? Fate perhaps. A nation has no honor, it has no word to keep.

• Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him.

• A shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

• Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.

• Death is psychologically as important as birth. Shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

• 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.

• Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

• Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

• I could not say I believe � I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God.

• I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice.