Carl Jung Inspirational Quotations

Space 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.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

The spirit is the life of the body seen from within, and the body the outward manifestation of the life of the spirit-the two being really one.

No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that someone will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent.

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

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 attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.

Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light.

The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual.

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

Sensation tell us a thing is. Thinking tell us what it is this thing is. Feeling tells us what this thing is to us.

One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games.

So they speak soothingly about progress and the greatest possible happiness, forgetting that happiness is itself poisoned if the measure of suffering has not been fulfilled.

Caution has its place, no doubt, but we cannot refuse our support to a serious venture which challenges the whole of the personality. If we oppose it, we are trying to suppress what is best in man - his daring and his aspirations. And should we succeed, we should only have stood in the way of that invaluable experience which might have given a meaning to life.

He who looks without, dreams; he who looks within, awakes.

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.

Every psychic advance of man arises from the suffering of the soul.

No man can change himself into anything from sheer reason; he can only change into what he potentially is.

Every human life contains a potential, if that potential is not fulfilled, then that life was wasted...

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

In each of us there is another whom we do not know.

Only 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.

The creative process is a living thing, implanted, as it were in the souls of men.

That which we do not confront in ourselves we will meet as fate.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

Shame is a soul eating emotion.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

But, if you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself.

We cannot change anything unless we accept it.

The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.

For better to come, good must stand aside.

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.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

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

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

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.

It is only our deeds that reveal who we are.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.

The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.

The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.

You never know what you have till you've lost it.

I guess by now I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.

I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.