The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams Quotes

“All the corpses in the world are chemically identical, but living individuals are not.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Often in the case of these sudden transformations one can prove that an archetype has been at work for a long time in the unconscious, skilfully arranging circumstances that will unavoidably lead to a crisis.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“And just as the typical neurotic is unconscious of his shadow side, so the normal individual, like the neurotic, sees his shadow in his neighbour or in the man beyond the great divide.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“in so far as society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individualists.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“It is not that present-day man is capable of greater evil than the man of antiquity or the primitive. He merely has incomparably more effective means with which to realize his propensity to evil.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Myths, however, consist of symbols that were not invented but happened.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“The result is that modern man knows himself only in so far as he can become conscious of himself—a capacity largely dependent on environmental conditions, knowledge and control of which necessitated or suggested certain modifications of his original instinctive tendencies. His consciousness therefore orients itself chiefly by observing and investigating the world around him, and it is to the latter’s peculiarities that he must adapt his psychic and technical resources. This task is so exacting, and its fulfilment so profitable, that he forgets himself in the process, losing sight of his instinctual nature and putting his own conception of himself in place of his real being.”
― Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Consciousness is a precondition of being.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“The forlorn state of consciousness in our world is due primarily to loss of instinct, and the reason for this lies in the development of the human mind over the past aeon. The more power man had over nature, the more his knowledge and skill went to his head, and the deeper became his contempt for the merely natural and accidental, for all irrational data—including the objective psyche, which is everything that consciousness is not.”
― Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“all the higher grades of science, imagination and intuition play an increasingly important role over and above intellect and its capacity for application.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Slavery and rebellion are inseparable correlates. Hence, rivalry for power and exaggerated distrust pervade the entire organism from top to bottom.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“The evil, the guilt, the profound unease of conscience, the dark foreboding, are there before our eyes, if only we would see. Man has done these things; I am a man, who has his share of human nature; therefore I am guilty with the rest and bear unaltered and indelibly within me the capacity and the inclination to do them again at any time. Even if, juristically speaking, we were not accessories to the crime, we are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals. In reality we merely lacked a suitable opportunity to be drawn into the infernal mêlée. None of us stands outside humanity’s black collective shadow. Whether the crime occurred many generations back or happens today, it remains the symptom of a disposition that is always and everywhere present—and one would therefore do well to possess some “imagination for evil,” for only the fool can permanently disregard the conditions of his own nature. In fact, this negligence is the best means of making him an instrument of evil.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“One even regrets the loss of such convictions. Since it is a matter of invisible and unknowable things (God is beyond human understanding, and immortality cannot be proved), why should we bother about evidence or truth? Suppose we did not know and understand the need for salt in our food, we would nevertheless profit from its use. Even if we should assume that salt is an illusion of our taste-buds, or a superstition, it would still contribute to our wellbeing. Why, then, should we deprive ourselves of views that prove helpful in crises and give a meaning to our existence? And how do we know that such ideas are not true? Many people would agree with me if I stated flatly that such ideas are illusions. What they fail to realize is that this denial amounts to a “belief” and is just as impossible to prove as a religious assertion”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“The effect on all individuals, which one would like to see realized, may not set in for hundreds of years, for the spiritual transformation of mankind follows the slow tread of the centuries and cannot be hurried or held up by any rational process of reflection, let alone brought to fruition in one generation. What does lie within our reach, however, is the change in individuals who have, or create for themselves, an opportunity to influence others of like mind. I do not mean by persuading or preaching—I am thinking, rather, of the well-known fact that anyone who has insight into his own actions, and has thus found access to the unconscious, involuntarily exercises an influence on his environment. The deepening and broadening of his consciousness produce the kind of effect which the primitives call “mana.” It is an unintentional influence on the unconscious of others, a sort of unconscious prestige, and its effect lasts only so long as it is not disturbed by conscious intention.”
― Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Virtually everything depends on the human psyche and its functions. It should be worthy of all the attention we can give it, especially today, when everyone admits that the weal or woe of the future will be decided neither by the threat of wild animals, nor by natural catastrophes, nor by the danger of world-wide epidemics, but simply and solely by the psychic changes in man. It needs only an almost imperceptible disturbance of equilibrium in a few of our rulers’ heads to plunge the world into blood, fire, and radioactivity.”
― Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“In the name of the multitude he was expressing the fact that Western man is in danger of losing his shadow altogether, of identifying himself with his fictive personality and the world with the abstract picture painted by scientific rationalism. His spiritual and moral opponent, who is just as real as he, no longer dwells in his own breast but beyond the geographical line of division, which no longer represents an outward political barrier but splits off the conscious from the unconscious man more and more menacingly.”
― Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“In this way he slips imperceptibly into a purely conceptual world where the products of his conscious activity progressively take the place of reality.”
― Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Although our civilized consciousness has separated itself from the instincts, the instincts have not disappeared; they have merely lost their contact with consciousness.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“The rupture between faith and knowledge is a symptom of the split consciousness which is so characteristic of the mental disorder of our day.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“If, for instance, I determine the weight of each stone in a bed of pebbles and get an average weight of five ounces, this tells me very little about the real nature of the pebbles.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“The symbol-producing function of our dreams is an attempt to bring our original mind back to consciousness, where it has never been before, and where it has never undergone critical self-reflection. We have been that mind, but we have never known it.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Even a scientist is a human being, and it is quite natural that he, like others, hates the things he cannot explain and thus falls victim to the common illusion that what we know today represents the highest summit of knowledge.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“To the scientific mind, such phenomena as symbolic ideas are most irritating, because they cannot be formulated in a way that satisfies our intellect and logic.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“This is an aspect of the modern “cultural” mind that is well worth looking into. It shows an alarming degree of dissociation and psychological confusion.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“A symbol does not disguise, it reveals in time.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Even if, juristically speaking, we are not accessories to the crime, we are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals. In reality we merely lacked a suitable opportunity to be drawn into the infernal melee.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Here each of us must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving int he crowd?”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“It is, unfortunately, only too clear that if the individual is not truly regenerated in spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of the individuals in need of redemption.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams