C.G. Jung

“Instead of the concrete individual, you have the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d’etat). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in the 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. The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled, and are distinguished only by the fact they are specialized mouthpieces of State doctrine. They do not need to be personalities capable of judgment, but thoroughgoing specialists who are unusable outside their line of business. State policy decides what shall be taught and studied.”

“Scientific education is based in the main on statistical truths and abstract knowledge and therefore imparts an unrealistic, rational picture of the world, in which the individual, as a merely marginal phenomenon, plays no role. The individual, however, as an irrational datum, is the true and authentic carrier of reality, the concrete man as opposed to the unreal ideal or “normal” man to whom the scientific statements refer.”

“The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality. While reflecting an indisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way. This is particularly true of theories which are based on statistics. The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. Not to put too fine a point on it, once could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity.”

“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.”

“Mi upravo zivimo u epohi metamorfoze bogova,sto ce reci metamorfoze osnovnih principa i simbola.To nastojanje,te aspiracije naseg vremena koje mogu izgledati porazavajuce i koje,zapravo,nismo mi sami svesno izabrali,predstavljaju izraz unutrasnje metamorfoze koja se zbiva u coveku a da on toga nije svestan.Te transformacije ce imati najteze posledice i generacije koje dolaze ce biti duzne da sacine njihov bilans ukoliko covecanstvo hoce da se spase od samounistenja koje mu snagom nauke i tehnike prete.”

“I have gradually learned to be cautious even in disbelief”

“Man is much more the victim of his psychic constitution than its inventor.”

“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.”

“Moj život je ono što sam učinio, moje znanstveno djelo; jedno je nerazdvojivo od drugoga. Moje djelo je izraz moga unutarnjeg razvoja, jer posvećivanje sadržajima nesvjesnog oblikuje čovjeka i dovodi do njegovih preobrazbi. Moja se djela mogu smatrati postajama na životnom putu.”

“Nepromišljeno jurimo za novotarijama, gonjeni sve snažnijim osjećajem nedostatnosti, nezadovoljstva i nemira. Više ne živimo od onoga što imamo, nego od obećanja, više ne u svjetlosti današnjega dana, nego u tami budućnosti, koja će, kako očekujemo, napokon donijeti pravi izlazak sunca.”

“Abraham Lincoln has crossed my path, when I was a little boy in school. He was pointed out to the schoolchildren as the model of a citizen, who has devoted his life to the welfare of his country—very much in the same way as those great men – bene meriti de patria – of the Roman republic and the Greek polis. Thus Abraham Lincoln has remained since my early days one of the shining stars in the assembly of immortal heroes. Is there greater fame than to be removed to the timeless sphere of mythical existence?”

“What you resist, persists”

“The sad truth is that man's real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites—day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.”

“Astrology is assured of recognition from psychology, without further restrictions, because astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity.”

“In each of us there is another whom we do not know.(quoted in Incognito )”

“Out of evil, much good has come to me. By keeping quiet, repressing nothing, remaining attentive, and by accepting reality - taking things as they are, and not as I wanted them to be - by doing all this, unusual knowledge has come to me, and unusual powers as well, such as I could never have imagined before. I always thought that when we accepted things they overpowered us in some way or other. This turns out not to be true at all, and it is only by accepting them that one can assume and attitude towards them. So now I intend to play the game of life, being receptive to whatever comes to me, good and bad, sun and shadow forever alternating, and, in this way, also accepting my own nature with its positive and negative sides. Thus everything becomes more alive to me. What a fool I was! How I tried to force everything to go according to way I thought it ought to. an ex patient of C. G. Jung (Alchemical Studies, pg 47)”

“If the demand for self-knowledge is willed by fate and is refused, this negative attitude may end in real death. The demand would not have come to this person had he still been able to strike out on some promising by-path. But he is caught in a blind alley from which only self-knowledge can extricate him. If he refuses this then no other way is left open to him. Usually he is not conscious of his situation, either, and the more unconscious he is the more he is at the mercy of unforeseen dangers: he cannot get out of the way of a car quickly enough, in climbing a mountain he misses his foothold somewhere, out skiing he thinks he can negotiate a tricky slope, and in an illness he suddenly loses the courage to live. The unconscious has a thousand ways of snuffing out a meaningless existence with surprising swiftness.”

“Neurosis is the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.”

“Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.”

“Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.”

“A true symbol appears only when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt.”

“After all, there was nothing preposterous and world-shaking in the idea that there might be events which overstepped the limited categories of space, time, and causality. Animals were known to sense beforehand storms and earthquakes. There were dreams which foresaw the death of certain persons, clocks which stopped at the moment of death, glasses which shattered at the critical moment. All these things had been taken for granted in the world of my childhood. And now I was apparently the only person who had ever heard of them. In all earnestness I asked myself what kind of world I had stumbled into. Plainly, the urban world knew nothing about the country world, the real world of mountains, woods and rivers, of animals and ‘God’s thoughts’ (plants and crystals). I found this explanation comforting. At all events, it bolstered my self-esteem.”

“The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.”

“We often dream about people from whom we receive a letter by the next post. I have ascertained on several occasions that at the moment when the dream occurred the letter was already lying in the post-office of the addressee.”

“We should know what our convictions are, and stand for them. Upon one's own philosophy, conscious or unconscious, depends one's ultimate interpretation of facts. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about one's subjective principles. As the man is, so will be his ultimate truth.”

“We are not what happened to us, we are what we wish to become.”

“A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his daimon.”

“Creative power is mightier than its possessor.”

“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.”

“How difficult it is to reach anything approaching a moderate and relatively calm point of view in the midst of one's emotions.”

“The psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual”

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”

“If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool”

“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.”

“Image is psyche.”

“The gods have become our diseases.”

“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.—address to the Society for Psychical Research in England”

“It seemed to me I was living in an insane asylum of my own making. I went about with all these fantastic figures: centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, gods and goddesses, as though they were patients and I was analyzing them. I read a Greek or Negro myth as if a lunatic were telling me his anamnesis.”

“Explore daily the will of God.”

“The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ -- all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness -- that I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then? As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.”

“I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears.”

“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.”

“The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.”

“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. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense— he is "collective man"— one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind.”

“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.”

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”