Quote collection
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"For a woman, the typical danger emanating from the unconscious comes from above, from the "spiritual" sphere personified by the animus, whereas for a man it comes from the chthonic realm of the "world and woman," i.e., the anima projected on to the world."
"I have no theory about dreams. I do not know how dreams arise. On the other hand, I know that if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly – if we take the boat with us and turn it over and over – something almost always comes out of it."
"My mandalas were cryptograms concerning the state of the self which was presented to me anew each day...I guarded them like precious pearls....It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the center. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the center, to individuation."
"In the second half of life the necessity is imposed of recognizing no longer the validity of our former ideals but of their contraries. Of perceiving the error in what was previously our conviction, of sensing the untruth in what was our truth, and of weighing the degree of opposition, and even of hostility, in what we took to be love."
"Life calls us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed this call because of childish laziness or timidity is threatened with neurosis. And once this has broken out, it becomes an increasingly valid reason for running away from life."
"I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once and cannot add up the sum."
"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."
"In knowing ourselves to be unique, we possess the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite. But only then!"
"The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual's faith into immediate relation with God."
"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."
"Just as man as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors."
"The word 'belief' is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it - I don't need to believe it."
"In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes."
"The psychiatrist knows only too well how each of us becomes the helpless but not pitiable victim of his own sentiments. Sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality."
"As one grows older one must try not to work oneself to death unnecessarily. At least that's how it is with me... I can scarcely keep pace and must watch out that the creative forces do not chase me around the universe in a wallop."
"The upheaval of our world and the upheaval of our consciousness are one and the same."
"His retreat into himself is not a final renunciation of the world, but a search for quietude, where alone it is possible for him to make his contribution to the life of the community."
"Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it."
"The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems, i.e., the archetypes. In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands."
"The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid."