Quotes from C.G. Jung

That we are bound to the earth does not mean that we cannot grow; on the contrary it is the sine qua non of growth. No noble, well-grown tree ever disowned its dark roots, for it grows not only upward but downward as well.

But the very fact that this process is unconscious gives us the reason why man has thought of everything except the psyche in his attempts to explain myths. He simply didn't know that the psyche contains all the images that have ever given rise to myths, and that our unconscious is an acting and suffering subject with an inner drama which primitive man rediscovers, by means of analogy, in the processes of nature both great and small.11 [9]

Not your thinking, but your being, is distinctiveness. Therefore not after difference, ye think it, must ye strive; but after YOUR OWN BEING. At bottom, therefore, there is only one striving, namely, the striving after your own being.

Nothing could persuade me that "in the image of God" applied only to man. In fact it seemed to me that the high mountains, the rivers, lakes, trees, flowers and animals far better exemplified the essence of God than men with their ridiculous clothes, their meanness, vanity, mendacity, and abhorrent egotism -

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. Who ever succeeded in draining the whole cup with grace?

If we do not have the depths, how do we have the heights? Yet you fear the depths, and do not want to confess that you are afraid of them. It is good, though, that you fear yourselves; say it out loud that you are afraid of yourselves. It is wisdom to fear oneself.

for as soon as psychotherapy requires the self-perfecting of the doctor, it is freed from its clinical origins and ceases to be a mere method for treating the sick. It is now of service to the healthy as well

My God is a child, so wonder not that the spirit of this time in me is incensed to mockery and scorn.

Only the man who has outgrown the stages of consciousness belonging to the past, and has amply fulfilled the duties appointed for him by his world, can achieve full consciousness of the present. To do this he must be sound and proficient in the best sense--a man who as achieved as much as other people, and even a little more. It is these qualities which enable him to gain the next highest level of consciousness.

Hidden in our problems is a bit of still undeveloped personality, a precious fragment of the psyche. Without this, we face resignation, bitterness and everything else that is hostile to life.

There appears to be a conscience in mankind which severely punishes the man who does not somehow and at some time, at whatever cost to his pride, cease to defend and assert himself, and instead confess himself fallible and human.

the soul said, "Is this what you think it means to be human?

It is the face of his own evil shadow that grins at Western man from the other side of the Iron curtain.

It is not that present-day man is capable of greater evil than the man of antiquity or the primitive. He merely has incomparably more effective means with which to realize his propensity to evil.

Many people may want some change from a containing pattern of life; but the freedom gained by travel (urged by the "run away to sea" poster), is no substitute for a true inner liberation.

Because there are innumerable things beyond the range of human understanding, we constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend. This is one reason why all religions employ symbolic language or images. But this conscious use of symbols is only one aspect of a psychological fact of great importance: Man also produces symbols unconsciously and spontaneously, in the form of dreams.

That the gods die from time to time is due to man's sudden discovery that they do not mean anything, that they are made by human hands, useless idols of wood and stone.

Acesta este pasul pe care Zarathustra nu l-a putut face: pasul c?tre "omul cel mai urât", omul adev?rat. Împotrivirea ÅŸi frica fa?? de el dovedesc cât de mare este puterea de atracÅ£ie ÅŸi de seducÅ£ie a ceea ce este inferior. Separarea de inferior nu este o soluÅ£ie.

Our past thinking has determined our present status, and our present thinking will determine our future status; for man is what man thinks.

The ideas of the moral order and of God belong to the ineradicable substrate of the human soul.

I had to follow the ineradicable foolishness which furnishes the steps to true wisdom.

Myths, however, consist of symbols that were not invented but happened.

The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself.

If your virtues hinder you from salvation, discard them, since they have become evil to you. The slave to virtue finds the way as little as the slave to vices.