The teacher pretended that algebra was a perfectly natural affair, to be taken for granted, whereas I didn't even know what numbers were. Mathematics classes became sheer terror and torture to me. I was so intimidated by my incomprehension that I did not dare to ask any questions.
Carl JungThrough pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.
Carl JungIt is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else. Nothing has a more diverse 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.
Carl JungI know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being.
Carl JungAs any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will experience it and carry it through. The change must indeed begin with an individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look round and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself.
Carl JungScience has destroyed even the refuge of the inner life. What was once a sheltering haven has become a place of terror
Carl JungIt was most essential for me to have a normal life in the real world as a counterpoise to that strange inner world. My family and my profession remained the base to which I could return.
Carl JungMan is the mirror God holds up to himself, the sense organ with which he apprehends his being.
Carl JungIf you think along the lines of Nature then you think properly." from the video "Carl Jung speaks about death
Carl JungNature seemed to me full of wonders, and I wanted to steep myself in them. Every stone, every plant, every single thing seemed alive and indescribably marvelous. I immersed myself in nature, crawled, as it were, into the very essence of nature and away from the whole human world.
Carl JungAstrologers are influenced by theosophy, so they say, "That is very simple, it is just vibration!" ... But what is vibration? They say it is light energy, perhaps electricity, they are not quite informed. At all events the vibrations that could influence us have never been seen, so it remains just a word.
Carl JungWhen we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer.
Carl JungThe darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness.
Carl JungEvery human being is inherently a unique and individual form of life. He or she is made like that. But there is something which a person can do over and above the given material of her nature, and that is she can become conscious of what makes her the person she is, and he can work consciously toward relating what is himself to the world around him.
Carl JungI know that previously I would not have dared to express myself so explicitly about so uncertain a matter. I can take this risk because I am now in my eighth decade, and the changing opinions of men scarcely impress me any more; the thoughts of the old masters are of greater value to me than the philosophical prejudices of the Western mind.
Carl JungNo one can flatter himself that he is immune to the spirit of his own epoch, or even that he possesses a full understanding of it. Irrespective of our conscious convictions, each one of us, without exception, being a particle of the general mass, is somewhere attached to, colored by, or even undermined by the spirit which goes through the mass. Freedom stretches only as far as the limits of our consciousness.
Carl JungA purely psychological explanation is ruled out... the discs show signs of intelligent guidance, by quasi-human pilots.
Carl JungSpace flights are merely an escape, a fleeing away from oneself, because it is easier to go to Mars or to the moon than it is to penetrate one's own being.
Carl JungA patient doesn't select his physical ailments. They happen to him. You could just as well ask when you are eaten by a crocodile, 'How did you select that crocodile?'. Nonsense. He has selected you. The patient doesn't even select the symptoms unconsciously. That is an extraordinary exaggeration of the subject to say he was choosing such things. They get him.
Carl JungThe cinema, like the detective story, makes it possible to experience without danger all the excitement, passion and desirousness which must be repressed in a humanitarian ordering of life.
Carl JungThe afternoon of a human life must have a significance of its own, and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning.
Carl JungOnly one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the "treasure hard to attain." He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. This experience gives him faith and trust.
Carl JungOnly a fool is interested in other people's guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart.
Carl JungI have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.
Carl JungA dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood it becomes a living experience.
Carl JungThere is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.
Carl JungThe creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Carl JungThe greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This 'outgrowing', as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person's horizon, and through this widening of view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency.
Carl Jung