Carl Jung Thinking Quotations

It is really the mistake of our age. We think it is enough to discover new things, but we don't realize that knowing more demands a cor­responding development of morality.

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

If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.

One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.

The Platonic world of ideas corresponds to Thinking and Sensation on the mystical level.

We are so accustomed to the apparently rational nature of our world that we can scarcely imagine anything happening that cannot be explained by common sense. The primitive man confronted by a shock of this kind would not doubt his sanity; he would think of fetishes, spirits or gods

I think there will be a reaction - a reaction will set in against this communal dissociation. You know, man doesn't stand forever, his nullification. Once, there will be a reaction, and I see it setting in, you know, when I think of my patients, they all seek their own existence and to assure their existence against that complete atomization into nothingness or into meaninglessness. Man cannot stand a meaningless life.

When you come to think about it, nothing has any meaning, for when there was nobody to think, there was nobody to interpret what happened.

There is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are older than the historical man, which are inborn in him from the earliest times, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them.

Doesn't the world bring forth thinking in human heads with the same necessity that it brings forth blossoms on the plant?

If you think along the lines of Nature then you think properly." from the video "Carl Jung speaks about death

I think that one should view with philosophic admiration the strange paths of the libido and should investigate the purposes of its circuitous ways.

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

I deliberately and consciously give preference to a dramatic, mythological way of thinking and speaking, because this is not only more expressive but also more exact than an abstract scientific terminology, which is wont to toy with the notion that its theoretic formulations may one fine day be resolved into algebraic equations.

It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence.

People are never helped in their suffering by what they think for themselves, but only by revelation of a wisdom greater than their own. It is this which lifts them out of their distress.

Whether you call the principle of existence "God," "matter," "energy," or anything else you like, you have created nothing; you have merely changed a symbol. Eastern and Western Thinking, 1938

Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

Learn your techniques well and be prepared to let them go when you touch the human soul.

Consciousness succumbs all too easily to unconscious influences, and these are often truer and wiser than our conscious thinking.

No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has become for him a source of life, meaning, and beauty, and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.

I think it is better for all people to live on, to look forward to the next stage (after death), as if he had to spend centuries, then he lives properly... looking forward to the great adventure ahead, then he lives!

Six weeks after his death my father appeared to me in a dream... It was an unforgettable experience, and it forced me for the first time to think about life after death.

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.

Intuition is one of the four basic psychological functions along with thinking, feeling,and sensing.

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

Knowing that wishes don’t always come about in the way that we think, but if you believe and keep your mind open, there’s a really good chance they will manifest in some way.

And I start to say, no. Start to ask him to please just take it off and put it away. Start to explain how it holds far too many memories for me. But then I remember what Damen said once about memories - that they're haunting things. And because I refuse to be haunted by mine - I just take a deep breath and smile when I say, "You know, I think it looks really good on you. You should defiantly keep it.

And while I'm sure you feel that your particular mistake is extraordinarily big, insurmountable even, contrary to what you might think, these types of things can always be undone, and oftentimes aren't nearily as lethal as we think—or, should I say, as we allow them to be.

Sometimes--sometimes it just hits me, you know? And, it's not getting any easier." I choke, my eyes flooding all over again. "I'm not sure that it will. I think you just get used to the feeling, the hollowness, the loss, and somehow learn to live around it

When you think about it in the big scheme of things our time together is like a dash of spice in a big cosmic soup - important for richness of flavor but still not quite the main ingredient. The past is over. It can't and shouldn't be reclaimed. All we ever have is now anyway.

After two solid weeks of waking up in Damen's bed, wrapped in Damen's arms, you'd think I'd have grown used to it by now. But nope. Not even close. Though I could get used to it. I'd like to get used to it.

I’m always thinking about what I’m missing. Even when I’m happy with what I have.