Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. His work has been influential in not only psychiatry but also anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies.
Jung was one of Sigmund Freud’s apprentices, and Freud saw the younger Carl Jung as the heir he had been seeking to carry on his “new science” of psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, Jung’s own research and vision were in contradiction with that of his older colleague, leading to a painful division and the end of their collaboration and friendship.
Jung travelled the world in order to explore many other fields, in addition to psychology and published over 200 studies on his findings. Many of his works were not published until after his death and some are still awaiting publication.
Below I’ve put together a collection of the best Carl Jung quotes of human and personal development that will enlighten you.
75 Carl Jung Quotes
1. “Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.” – Carl Jung
2. “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
3. “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.” – Carl Jung
4. “We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.” – Carl Jung
5. “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.” – Carl Jung
6. “The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.” – Carl Jung
7. “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” – Carl Jung
8. “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” – Carl Jung
9. “Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.” – Carl Jung
10. “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.” – Carl Jung
11. “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” – Carl Jung
12. “The 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 Jung
13. “Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.” – Carl Jung
14. “Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.” – Carl Jung
15. “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” – Carl Jung
16. “Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.” – Carl Jung
17. “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.” – Carl Jung
18. “Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.” – Carl Jung
19. “The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.” – Carl Jung
20. “Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.” – Carl Jung
21. “Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.” – Carl Jung
22. “We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.” – Carl Jung
23. “It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.” – Carl Jung
24. “If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.” – Carl Jung
25. “Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.” – Carl Jung
26. “All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.” – Carl Jung
27. “The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.” – Carl Jung
28. “The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” – Carl Jung
29. “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – Carl Jung
30. “Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.” – Carl Jung
31. “A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.” – Carl Jung
32. “Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.” – Carl Jung
33. “The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.” – Carl Jung
34. “For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.” – Carl Jung
35. “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.” – Carl Jung
36. “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” – Carl Jung
37. “You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.” – Carl Jung
38. “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” – Carl Jung
39. “Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.” – Carl Jung
40. “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.” – Carl Jung
41. “I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.” – Carl Jung
42. “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” – Carl Jung
43. “Don’t hold on to someone who’s leaving, otherwise you won’t meet the one who’s coming.” – Carl Jung
44. “If you are a gifted person, it doesn’t mean that you gained something. It means you have something to give back.” – Carl Jung
45. “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” – Carl Jung
46. “Loneliness does not come from having no people around, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” – Carl Jung
47. “Depression is like a woman in black. If she turns up, don’t shoo her away. Invite her in, offer her a seat, treat her like a guest and listen to what she wants to say.” – Carl Jung
48. “What you resist, persists.” – Carl Jung
49. “Shame is a soul eating emotion.” – Carl Jung
50. “To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.” – Carl Jung
51. “To me dreams are part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive but expresses something as best it can.” – Carl Jung
52. “The capacity for directed thinking I call intellect; the capacity for passive or undirected thinking I call intellectual intuition.” – Carl Jung
53. “I have always been impressed by the fact that there are a surprising number of individuals who never use their minds if they can avoid it, and an equal number who do use their minds, but in an amazingly stupid way.” – Carl Jung
54. “As 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 Jung
55. “It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.” – Carl Jung
56. “The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” – Carl Jung
57. “Without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.” – Carl Jung
58. “Nobody, as long as he moves among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.” – Carl Jung
59. “The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.” – Carl Jung
60. “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” – Carl Jung
61. “Sometimes you have to do something unforgivable just to be able to go on living.” – Carl Jung
62. “The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual.” – Carl Jung
63. “We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.” – Carl Jung
64. “Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.” – Carl Jung
65. “Everyone is in love with his own ideas.” – Carl Jung
66. “Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.” – Carl Jung
67. “Where love stops, power begins, and violence, and terror.” – Carl Jung
68. “You always become the thing you fight the most.” – Carl Jung
69. “We don’t so much solve our problems as we outgrow them. We add capacities and experiences that eventually make us bigger than the problems.” – Carl Jung
70. “The greatest sin is to be unconscious.” – Carl Jung
71. “Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event.” – Carl Jung
72. “Nothing is possible without love.” – Carl Jung
73. “Everyone can afford to give away a smile.” – Carl Jung
74. “Life is something that has to be lived and not talked about.” – Carl Jung
75. “Life calls not for perfection, but for completeness.” – Carl Jung
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