24 Wise Carl Jung Quotes To Transform Your Life

He is the most awe-inspiring author I’ve ever read, and the depth of his wisdom never ceases to amaze me. A renowned Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Carl Jung founded the discipline of analytical psychology. His education was truly unique – biology, psychology, mythology, religion, literature, philosophy, anthropology and much more. I have collected these wise and deeply human Carl Jung quotes to give you a glimpse into his incredible insights on psychology and transformations of personality.

Initially, a brilliant student of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung deeply studied the relations between biology and psychology. Even though many thought he would continue Freud’s work on psychoanalysis, the two had very different ideas. Jung had brilliant concepts of his own, which challenged his teacher on core subjects. Unsurprisingly, different personalities and points of view resulted in many arguments, ending a fruitful collaboration and a friendship.

The central idea of analytical psychology is the individual’s quest for wholeness, highly similar to the hero’s journey of mythology. Carl Jung‘s core concepts include individuation, symbols, archetypes, the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious, the shadow, the anima and animus, and the Self. His ideas and methods are highly creative, and he established the practice of creating art as a central part of psychological development.

Carl Jung extensively studied mythology and religion in order to establish central patterns common to all human beings. This led him to travel the world, living among indigenous tribes in Africa and the US, and he deeply immersed himself in those cultures. Additionally, Jung explored the unconscious using active imagination, a technique he developed. He published many thick volumes about his work – which are incredibly difficult, but highly rewarding to read, and a large quantity of scientific papers.

His work has transformed the lives of countless people into more complete, confident and resilient individuals. Jungian psychology is the basis for an incredible amount of research and development, even though academic psychology stays far, far away from his ideas.

If you wish to get into the world of analytical psychology, the best place to start is Carl Jung’s book Man and his symbols. Alternatively, you could start with his student, Erich Neumann’s book The Origins and History of Consciousness. (links below)

Finally, here are 24 Carl Jung quotes for a deeper appreciation of yourself and others:

24 Wise Carl Jung Quotes To Transform Your Life

1. “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
2. “The capacity for directed thinking I call intellect; the capacity for passive or undirected thinking I call intellectual intuition.” – Carl Jung
3. “Everything that irritates us about others can lead to an understanding of ourselves.” – Carl Jung
4. “You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.” – Carl Jung Quotes
5. “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” – Carl Jung
6. “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” – Carl Jung
   
   
7. “To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.” – Carl Jung
8. “Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.” – Carl Jung
9. “A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood it becomes a living experience.” – Carl Jung
10. “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
11. “A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction, with a consequent drain from some other side of life. – Carl Jung
12. We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.” – Carl Jung
13. “The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.” – Carl Jung
14. “If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely.” – Carl Jung
15. “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.” – Carl Jung
16. “I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.” – Carl Jung
17. “To me dreams are part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive but expresses something as best it can.” – Carl Jung
    
18. “I regret many follies which sprang from my obstinacy; but without that trait I would not have reached my goal.” – Carl Jung 
19. “Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” – Carl Jung
20. “A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood it becomes a living experience.” – Carl Jung
21. “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
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22. “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.” – Carl Jung
23. “If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely.” – Carl Jung
24. “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 Quotes

Summary

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