The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several million human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche.

As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.

Everything good is costly, and the development of personality is one of the most costly of all things. It is a matter of saying yes to oneself, of taking oneself as the most serious of tasks, of being conscious of everything one does, and keeping it constantly before one's eyes in all its dubious aspects.

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

Our blight is ide­olo­gies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!

The capacity for inner dialogue is a touchstone for outer objectivity.

I want to be freed neither from human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest of miracles.