Quotes from Carl Jung

Because there are innumerable things beyond the range of human understanding, we cannot constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend.

Nothing has a more divisive and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections.

So it comes about that there are many neurotics whose inner decency prevents them from being at one with present-day morality and who cannot adapt themselves so long as the moral code has gaps in it which it is of the crying need of our age to fill.

Misoneism" — a fear of the new and the unknown

whereas the neurosis and the troubles that attend it are never followed by the pleasant feeling of good work well done, of duty fearlessly performed, the suffering that comes from useful work and from victory over real difficulties brings with it those moments of peace and satisfaction which give the human being the priceless feeling that he has really lived his life.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light," he said, "but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.

Projection is one of the commonest psychic phenomena…Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly.

There is no pit you cannot climb out of provided you make the right effort at the right place… do the next thing with diligence and devotion.

Not that these others are wholly without blame, for even the worst projection is at least hung on a hook, perhaps a very small one, but still a hook offered by the other person.

A] sense of moral inferiority" writes Jung "always indicates that the missing element is something which, to judge by this feeling about it, really ought not to be missing, or which could be made conscious if only one took sufficient trouble. . .Whenever a sense of moral inferiority appears, it indicates not only a need to assimilate an unconscious component, but also the possibility of such assimilation.

The psychologist has come to see that nothing is achieved by telling, persuading, admonishing, giving good advice.

Mars'a ula?mak, kendine ula?maktan kolayd?r.

modern people…are ignorant of what they really are. We have simply forgotten what a human being really is, so we have men like Nietzsche and Freud and Adler, who tell us what we are, quite mercilessly. We have to discover our shadow. Otherwise we are driven into a world war in order to see what beasts we are.

Nevroz, anlam?n? arayan ruhun ac? çekmesidir.

The natural state of the human psyche consists in a jostling together of its components and in their contradictory behavior... The reconciliation of these opposites is a major problem. Thus, the adversary is none other than 'the other in me.

Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge!

The psyche cannot be totally different from matter, otherwise how could it move matter? Matter cannot be alien to the psyche, otherwise how would it produce the psyche? Psyche and matter exist in one and the same world and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research on both would go far enough, we would come to a final agreement between physical and psychological concepts.

So far as we have any information about man, we know that he has always and everywhere been under the influence of dominating ideas. Any one who alleges that he is not can immediately be suspected of having exchanged a known form of belief for a variant which is less known both to himself and to others. Instead of theism he is a devotee of atheism, instead of Dionysus he favours the more modern Mithras, and instead of heaven he seeks paradise on earth.

Only in the desert do we become aware of our terrible simple-mindedness, but we are afraid of admitting it.

Because I carried the war in me, I foresaw it.

Who has vocation hears the voice of the inner man; he is called. And so it is the legendary belief that he possesses a private demon who counsels him and whose mandates he must execute.

If a God ceases being the way of life, he must fall secretly.

No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.

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.