Carl Jung Quotes

424 Sourced Quotes

Caution has its place, no doubt, but we cannot refuse our support to a serious venture which challenges the whole of the personality. If we oppose it, we are trying to suppress what is best in man - his daring and his aspirations. And should we succeed, we should only have stood in the way of that invaluable experience which might have given a meaning to life.

Carl Jung
Our western mind lacking all culture in this respect, has never yet devised a concept, not even a name for "the union of opposites through the middle path", that most fundamental item of inward experience which could respectably be set against the Chinese concept of Tao.

Carl Jung
Our intellect has achieved the most tremendous things, but in the meantime our spiritual dwelling has fallen into disrepair.

Carl Jung
So they speak soothingly about progress and the greatest possible happiness, forgetting that happiness is itself poisoned if the measure of suffering has not been fulfilled.

Carl Jung
A book of mine is always a matter of fate. There is something unpredictable about the process of writing, and I cannot prescribe for myself any predetermined course.

Carl Jung
A sign is always less than the thing it points to, and a symbol is always more than we can understand at first sight. Therefore we stop at the sign but go on to the goal it indicates; but we remain with the symbol because it promises more than it reveals.

Carl Jung
Our intellect has created a new world that dominates nature, and has populated it with monstrous machines.

Carl Jung
The artist's life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him [or her]-on the one hand, the common human longing for happiness, satisfaction and security in life, and on the other a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire... There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire.

Carl Jung
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.

Carl Jung
I studiously avoided all so-called "holy men." I did so because I had to make do with my own truth, not accept from others what I could not attain on my own. I would have felt it as a theft had I attempted to learn from the holy men and to accept their truth for myself. Neither in Europe can I make any borrowings from the East, but must shape my life out of myself-out of what my inner being tells me, or what nature brings to me.

Carl Jung
Be simple and always take the next step. You needn't see it in advance, but you can look back at it afterwards.There is no 'how' of life, one just does it.

Carl Jung
The self is our life's goal, for it is the completest expression of that fateful combination we call individuality.

Carl Jung
The answer to human life is not to be found within the limits of human life.

Carl Jung
The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community.

Carl Jung
The individual disposition is already a factor in childhood; it is innate, and not acquired in the course of a life.

Carl Jung
The only thing that really matters now is whether man can climb up to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness, in order to be equal to the superhuman powers which the fallen angels have played into his hands. But he can make no progress until he becomes very much better acquainted with his own nature.

Carl Jung
I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.

Carl Jung
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.

Carl Jung
Synchronistic phenomena prove the simultaneous occurrence of meaningful equivalences in heterogenous, causally unrelated processes; in other words, they prove that a content perceived by an observer can, at the same time, be represented by an outside event, without any causal connection. From this it follows either that the psyche cannot be localized in time, or that space is relative to the psyche.

Carl Jung
The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and elaborating and shaping the image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life.

Carl Jung
In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential that we embody. If we do not embody that, life is wasted.

Carl Jung
We are a psychic process which we do not control, or only partly direct. Consequently, we cannot have any final judgment about ourselves or our lives.

Carl Jung
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.

Carl Jung
The Christian religion seems to have fulfilled its great biological purpose, in so far as we are able to judge. It has led human thought to independence, and has lost its significance, therefore, to a yet undetermined extent.... It seems to me that we might still make use in some way of its form of thought, and especially of its great wisdom of life, which for two thousand years has proven to be particularly efficacious.

Carl Jung
The dream arises from a part of the mind unknown to us, but none the less important, and is concerned with the desires for the approaching day.

Carl Jung
Plants were bound for good or ill to their places. They expressed not only beauty but also the thoughts of God's world, with an intent of their own and without deviation. Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason, the woods were the places where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings.

Carl Jung
The psychotherapist learns little or nothing from his successes. They mainly confirm him in his mistakes, while his failures, on the other hand, are priceless experiences in that they not only open up the way to a deeper truth, but force him to change his views and methods.

Carl Jung
Ultimate truth, if there be such a thing, demands the concert of many voices.

Carl Jung
As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols.

Carl Jung
Science is the art of creating suitable illusions which the fool believes or argues against, but the wise man enjoys for their beauty or their ingenuity, without being blind to the fact that they are human veils and curtains concealing the abysmal darkness of the unknowable

Carl Jung