Carl Gustav Jung (born July 26, 1875, Kesswil, Thurgau, Switzerland – died June 6, 1961, Küsnacht, Zürich, Switzerland) was a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of the school of analytical psychology.
Jung created some of the most known psychological concepts, including synchronicity, archetypes, the psychological complex, the principle of individuation, the extraverted and the introverted personality, and the power of the unconscious.
Jung was also a prolific writer, but many of his works were published only after his death. Some of his notable books are Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933), and Man and His Symbols (1964).
His work also influenced archaeology, anthropology, literature, religion, and many other fields.
Below is a collection of Carl Jung’s best quotes with sources and images.
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.Letter to Fanny Bowdich (October 22, 1916)
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.Letter to Kendig B. Cully (September 25, 1937)
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage Books, ed. 1965), Chapter XI, Page 326
The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Harcourt, Brace & Co., ed. 1933), Chapter III, Page 69
We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.Psychology and Religion: West and East (Princeton University Press, ed. 1958), Chapter V, Page 339
Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other.Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (Pantheon Books, ed. 1953), Essay I. The Psychology of the Unconscious, Page 52
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.Civilization in Transition (Pantheon Books, ed. 1964), Part III, Chapter III, Page 201
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Routledge & Kegan Paul, ed. 1959), Chapter I, Page 32
Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has wrestled in vain.The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (Princeton University Press, ed. 1960), Chapter I, Page 86
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Harcourt, Brace & Co., ed. 1933), Chapter II, Page 57
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage Books, ed. 1965), Chapter XII, Page 329
The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.Return to the Simple Life (1941); in The Symbolic Life: Miscellaneous Writings (Princeton University Press, ed. 1976), Page 587
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 object it loves.Psychological Types (Princeton university Press, ed. 1971), Chapter II, Page 123
Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.Letter to Frances G. Wickes (November 6, 1926)
There is no birth of consciousness without pain.The Development of Personality (Pantheon Books, ed. 1954), Chapter VIII, Page 193
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage Books, ed. 1965), Chapter IX, Page 247
Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Harcourt, Brace & Co., ed. 1933), Chapter VI, Page 136
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.Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (Princeton university Press, ed. 1953), Chapter XV, Page 269
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.Psychology and Alchemy (Pantheon books, ed. 1953), Part II, Chapter 3, Page 95
To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Routledge & Kegan Paul, ed. 1959), Chapter I, Page 23
The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.Psychological Types (Princeton university Press, ed. 1971), Chapter I, Page 63
Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.The Development of Personality (Pantheon Books, ed. 1954), Chapter V, Page 141
Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into halves of a paradoxical whole.Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage Books, ed. 1965), Chapter XII, Page 329
Find more about Carl Jung on Amazon
Emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion.The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Routledge & Kegan Paul, ed. 1959), Chapter II, Page 96
It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Harcourt, Brace & Co., ed. 1933), Chapter III, Page 75
The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage Books, ed. 1965), Chapter V, Page 154
The word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.The Art of Living, by Gordon Young (Sunday Times, July 17, 1960); in C. G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters (Pan Books, ed. 1980), Page 404
The greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble. They must be so, for they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.Alchemical Studies (Princeton University Press, ed. 1967), Chapter I, Page 15
Great gifts are the fairest, and often the most dangerous, fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang on the weakest branches, which easily break.The Development of Personality (Pantheon Books, ed. 1954), Chapter V, Page 141
Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (Princeton University Press, ed. 1960), Chapter I, Page 73
If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely.Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage Books, ed. 1965), Retrospect, Page 356
Where pride is insistent enough, memory prefers to give way.Man and His Symbols (Dell, ed. 1964), Part 1, Page 22
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.Civilization in Transition (Pantheon Books, ed. 1964), Part III, Chapter III, Page 198
If there is anything that we wish to change in our children, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.The Development of Personality (Pantheon Books, ed. 1954), Chapter VII, Page 170
If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.Mysterium Coniunctionis (Princeton University Press, ed. 1963), Chapter III, Page 125
You can take away a man’s gods, but only to give him others in return.Civilization in Transition (Pantheon Books, ed. 1964), Part IV, Chapter IV, Page 280
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.Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage Books, ed. 1965), Retrospect, Page 356
I had always been impressed by the fact that there are surprisingly many individuals who never use their minds if they can avoid it, and yet are not stupid, and an equal number who obviously do use their minds but in an amazingly stupid way.The Symbolic Life (Princeton University Press, ed. 1976), Chapter II, Page 218
A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction, with a consequent drain from some other side of life.Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Harcourt, Brace & Co., ed. 1933), Chapter VIII, Page 196
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage Books, ed. 1965), Chapter IX, Page 277
Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to [abandon exact science] put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world.Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (Pantheon Books, ed. 1953), Essay II, Appendices: 1. New Paths in Psychology, Page 244
Without freedom there can be no morality.Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (Pantheon Books, ed. 1953), Essay II, Part I, Chapter II. Phenomena Resulting from the Assimilation of the Unconscious, Page 151
As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will undergo it and carry it through. The change must begin with one individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look around and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself.The Symbolic Life (Princeton University Press, ed. 1976), Chapter II, Page 261
Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.Civilization in Transition (Pantheon Books, ed. 1964), Part IV, Chapter IV, Page 278
Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.Based on the testimony of Jolande Jacobi as recorded by Vincent Brome (1963)
Creative minds are rarely tidy.John W. Gardner, Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society (1944), Page 49 and 69-70