If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.
— Carl JungMysterium Coniunctionis, from The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (1966)
Use itGS4: empathy before judgement; misunderstanding others leads us to dismiss them.
Thinker · 17 quotes
Carl Jung quotes for UPSC
17 sourced quotes by Carl Jung on education & knowledge, happiness & meaning of life, compassion & empathy, resilience & perseverance, emotions & self-control, with a use case for each in GS4, Essay and interviews.
✓ Attributions checked against Wikiquote's sourced list
The healthy man does not torture others—generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.
Use itGS4/GS2 on reformative justice; victims of abuse often become abusers, so address root causes.
The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and ... each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.
Use itEssay on learning; widening consciousness is painful but every step is progress.
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.
Use itGS4 on family as moral educator; parents should correct themselves before the child.
That is why I say to any beginner: Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul. Not theories, but your own creative individuality alone must decide.
Use itGS4/Essay on rules vs judgement; master theory, then let practical wisdom guide real cases.
Translation: 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.
Use itGS4/Essay on power vs love; where domination grows, care disappears.
You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.
Use itEssay on secularism; humans always replace old faiths with new ideologies or idols.
Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.
— Carl Jung"The Transcendent Function" ("Die Transzendente Funktion") (1916)
Use itLife: reframe hardship as necessary for growth; essay on adversity building strength.
The meaning and design of a problem seem not to lie in its solution, but in our working at it incessantly.
Use itLife: value the struggle of working at a problem, not just its solution.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Use itEssay conclusion on purpose of life; humans exist to bring light and meaning.
But we must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life; that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts.
— Carl JungModern Man in Search of a Soul. Section - The Stages of Life (1933)
Use itEssay on the art of living well as the rarest achievement.
For 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.
Use itEssay on meaning vs material success; perspective decides value, not size of things.
The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual.
Use itGS4 on mob mentality and crowd behaviour; the individual conscience shrinks in a crowd.
Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.
— Carl JungPsychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype (1938)
Use itGS4 emotional intelligence answer: emotions drive awareness and change, not just disrupt reason.
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 JungVariant translation: We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the
Use itGS4 on emotional intelligence; intellect alone gives half the truth, feeling completes it.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Use itEssay on human relationships; genuine encounters transform both people involved.
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.
Use itEssay on loneliness epidemic; isolation comes from lack of communication, not lack of people.