But what is this discredited and rejected source of vitality?

It consists of all those psychic contents that were repressed because of their incompatibility with conscious values—everything hateful, immoral, wrong, unsuitable, useless, etc., which means everything that at one time or another appeared so to the individual concerned.

The danger is that when these things reappear in a new and wonderful guise, they may make such an impact on him that he will forget or repudiate all his former values.

What he once despised now becomes the supreme principle, and what was once truth now becomes error.

This reversal of values amounts to the destruction of the old ones and is similar to the devastation of a country by floods.

Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 449, Lewis Lafontaine‎ to Carl Jung Depth Psychology

Each individual is a new experiment of life in her ever-changing moods, and an attempt at a new solution or new adaptation. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 173

No doubt it is a great nuisance that mankind is not uniform but compounded of individuals whose psychic structure spreads them over a span of at least ten thousand years.

Hence there is absolutely no truth that does not spell salvation to one person and damnation to another.

All universalisms get stuck in this terrible dilemma, ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 36

In our delusion-ridden world a truth is so precious that nobody wants to let it slip merely for the sake of a few so-called exceptions which refuse to toe the line.

And whoever doubts this truth is invariably looked on as a faithless reprobate, so that a note of fanaticism and intolerance everywhere creeps into the discussion.

And yet each of us can carry the torch of knowledge but a part of the way, until another takes it from him.

If only we could understand all this impersonally—could understand that we are not the personal creators of our truths, but only their exponents, mere mouthpieces of the day’s psychic needs, then much venom and bitterness might be spared and we should be able to perceive the profound and supra-personal continuity of the human mind. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 156

Conviction easily turns into self-defense and is seduced into rigidity, and this is inimical to life.

The test of a firm conviction is its elasticity and flexibility; like every other exalted truth it thrives best on the admission of its errors. ~Carl Jung, 16, Para 180

Convictions and moral values would have no meaning if they were not believed and did not possess exclusive validity.

And yet they are man-made and time-conditioned assertions or explanations which we know very well are capable of all sorts of modifications, as has happened in the past and will happen again in the future. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 230

There would appear to be a sort of conscience in mankind which severely punishes everyone who does not somehow and at some time, at whatever cost to his virtuous pride, cease to defend and assert himself, and instead confess himself fallible and human.

Until he can do this, an impenetrable wall shuts him off from the vital feeling that he is a man among other men. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 132

Error is just as important a condition of life’s progress as truth. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 451

A fact never exists only as it is in itself, but also as we see it. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 510

Human reality is made up of a thousand vulgarities. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 56

In this overpoweringly humdrum existence, alas, there is little out of the ordinary that is healthy, and not much room for conspicuous heroism.

Not that heroic demands are never put to us: on the contrary—and this is just what is so irritating and irksome—the banal everyday makes banal demands on our patience, our devotion, perseverance, self-sacrifice; and for us to fulfil these demands (as we must) humbly and without courting applause through heroic gestures, a heroism is needed that cannot be seen from the outside.

It does not glitter, is not belauded, and it always seeks concealment in everyday attire. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 72

Often it is just as well that we do not know the danger we escape when we rush in where angels fear to tread. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 247

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.

It may help us to escape all criticism, we may even be able to deceive ourselves in the belief of our obvious righteousness.

But deep down, below the surface of the average man’s conscience, he hears a voice whispering, “There is something not right,” no matter how much his Tightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 80

Be the man through whom you wish to influence others.

Mere talk has always been counted hollow, and there is no trick, however artful, by which this simple truth can be evaded in the long run.

The fact of being convinced and not the thing we are convinced of—that is what has always, and at all times, worked. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 167

For a moral man the ethical problem is a passionate question which has its roots in the deepest instinctual processes as well as in his most idealistic aspirations.

The problem for him is devastatingly real. It is not surprising, therefore, that the answer likewise springs from the depths of his nature. 1048:289

Emotion is not an activity of the individual but something that happens to him. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 15

Affects usually occur where adaptation is weakest, and at the same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a certain degree of inferiority and the existence
of a lower level of personality.

On this lower level with its uncontrolled or scarcely controlled emotions one behaves more or less like a primitive, who is not only the passive victim of his affects but also singularly incapable of moral judgment. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 15

It is through the “affect” that the subject becomes involved and so comes to feel the whole weight of reality.

The difference amounts roughly to that between a severe illness which one reads about in a text-book and the real illness which one has.

In psychology one possesses nothing unless one has experienced it in reality.

Hence a purely intellectual insight is not enough, because one knows only the words and not the substance of the thing from inside. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 61

Disappointment, always a shock to the feelings, is not only the mother of bitterness but the strongest possible incentive to a differentiation of feeling.

The failure of a pet plan, the disappointing behaviour of someone one loves, can supply the impulse either for a more or less brutal outburst of affect or for a modification and adjustment of feeling, and hence for its higher development.

This culminates in wisdom if feeling is supplemented by reflection and rational insight.

Wisdom is never violent: where wisdom reigns there is no conflict between thinking and feeling. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 334

The truth is that we do not enjoy masterless freedom; we are continually threatened by psychic factors which, in the guise of “natural phenomena,” may take possession of
us at any moment.

The withdrawal of metaphysical project at least hold it at arm’s length and prevent it from storming the citadel of the ego. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 143

Bondage and possession are synonymous.

Always, therefore, there is something in the psyche that takes possession and limits or suppresses our moral freedom.

In order to hide this undeniable but exceedingly unpleasant fact from ourselves and at the same time pay lip-service to freedom, we have got accustomed to saying apotropaically, “have such and such a desire or habit or feeling of resentment,” instead of the more veracious “Such and such a desire or habit or feeling of resentment has me”

The latter formulation would certainly rob us even of the illusion of freedom.

But I ask myself whether this would not be better in the end than fuddling ourselves with words. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 143

If man were merely a creature that came into being as a result of something already existing unconsciously, he would have no freedom and there would be no point in
consciousness.

Psychology must reckon with the fact that despite the causal nexus man does enjoy a feeling of freedom, which is identical with autonomy of consciousness.

However much the ego can be proved to be dependent and preconditioned, it cannot be convinced that it has no freedom.

An absolutely preformed consciousness and a totally dependent ego would be a pointless farce, since everything would proceed just as well or even better unconsciously.

The existence of ego consciousness has meaning only if it is free and autonomous.

By stating these facts we have, it is true, established an antinomy, but we have at the same time given a picture of things as they are.

There are temporal, local, and individual differences in the degree of dependence and freedom.

In reality both are always present: the supremacy of the self and the hybris of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 391

Each of us is equipped with a psychic disposition that limits our freedom in high degree and makes it practically illusory.

Not only is “freedom of the will” an incalculable problem philosophically, it is also a misnomer in the practical sense, for we seldom find anybody who is not influenced and indeed dominated by desires, habits, impulses, prejudices, resentments, and by every conceivable kind of complex.

All these natural facts function exactly like an Olympus full of deities who want to be propitiated, served, feared and worshipped, not only by the individual owner of this assorted pantheon, but by everybody in his vicinity. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 143

Because we are still such barbarians, any trust in the laws of human nature seems to us a dangerous and unethical naturalism.

Why is this?

Because under the barbarian’s thin veneer of culture the wild beast lurks in readiness, amply justifying his fear.

But the beast is not tamed by locking it up in a cage.

There is no morality without freedom.

When the barbarian lets loose the beast within him, that is not freedom but bondage.

Barbarism must first be vanquished before freedom can be won.

This happens, in principle, when the basic root and driving force of morality are felt by the individual as constituents of his own nature and not as external restrictions. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 357

Although contemporary man believes that he can change himself without limit, or be changed through external influences, the astounding, or rather the terrifying, fact remains
that despite civilization and Christian education, he is still, morally, as much in bondage to his instincts as an animal, and can therefore fall victim at any moment to the beast within. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para xviii

Moral law is nothing other than an outward manifestation of man’s innate urge to dominate and control himself.

This impulse to domestication and civilization is lost in the dim, unfathomable depths of man’s evolutionary history and can never be conceived as the consequence of laws
imposed from without, Man himself, obeying his instincts, created his laws. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 486

Morality was not brought down on tables of stone from Sinai and imposed on the people, but is a function of the human soul, as old as humanity itself.

Morality is not imposed from outside; we have it in ourselves from the start —not the law, but our moral nature without which the collective life of human society would be impossible.

That is why morality is found at all levels of society.

It is the instinctive regulator of action which also governs the collective life of the herd. But moral laws are only valid within a compact human group.

Beyond that, they cease.

There the old truth runs: Homo homini lupus.

With the growth of civilization we have succeeded in subjecting ever larger human groups to the rule of the same morality, without, however, having yet brought the moral code to prevail beyond the social frontiers, that is, in the free space between mutually independent societies.

There, as of old, reign lawlessness and license and mad immorality—though of course it is only the enemy who dares to say it out loud. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 30

We should never forget that what today seems to us a moral commandment will tomorrow be cast into the melting-pot and transformed, so that in the near or distant future it may serve as a basis for new ethical formations.

This much we ought to have learnt from the history of civilization, that the forms of morality belong to the category of transitory things. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 667

The only thing that cannot be improved upon is morality, for every alteration of traditional morality is by definition an immorality.

This bon mot has an edge to it, against which many an innovator has barked his shins. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 114

Every one of us gladly turns away from his problems; if possible, they must not be mentioned, or, better still, their existence is denied.

We wish to make our lives simple, certain, and smooth, and for that reason problems are taboo.

We want to have certainties and no doubts—results and no experiments—without even seeing that certainties can arise only through doubt and results only through experiment.

The artful denial of a problem will not produce conviction: on the contrary, a wider and higher consciousness is required to give us the certainty and clarity we need. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 751

Hysterical self-deceivers, and ordinary ones too, have at all times understood the art of misusing everything so as to avoid the demands and duties of life, and above all to
shirk the duty of confronting themselves.

They pretend to be seekers after God in order not to have to face the truth that they are ordinary egoists. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 142

Naturally, you can make a wrong use of self-knowledge, just as of any other knowledge. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 18

The sense of moral inferiority always indicates that the missing element is something which, to judge by his feeling about it, really ought not be missing, or which could be
made conscious if only one took sufficient trouble.

The moral inferiority does not come from a collision with the generally accepted and, in a sense, arbitrary moral law, but from the conflict with one’s own self which, for reasons of psychic equilibrium, demands that the deficit be redressed.

Whenever a sense of moral inferiority appears, it indicates not only a need to assimilate an unconscious component, but also the possibility of such assimilation.

In the last resort it is a man’s moral qualities which force him, either through direct recognition of the need or indirectly through a painful neurosis, to assimilate his unconscious self and to keep himself fully conscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 218

Only through our feebleness and incapacity are we linked up with the unconscious, with the lower world of the instincts and with our fellow beings.

Our virtues only enable us to be independent.

There we do not need anybody, there we are kings; but in our inferiority we are linked up with mankind. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 109

Wherever an inferiority complex exists, there is a good reason for it.

There actually is an inferiority somewhere, though not just where one supposes it is.

Modesty and humility are not signs of an inferiority complex.

They are highly estimable, indeed admirable virtues and not complexes.

They prove that their fortunate possessor is not a presumptuous fool but knows his limitations, and will therefore never stumble beyond the bounds of humanity, dazzled
and intoxicated by his imagined greatness. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 18

We psychologists have learned, through long and painful experience, that you deprive a man of his best resource when you help him to get rid of his complexes.

You can only help him to become sufficiently aware of them and to start a conscious conflict within himself.

In this way the complex becomes a focus of life.

Anything that disappears from your psychological inventory is apt to turn up in the guise of a hostile neighbour, who will inevitably arouse your anger and make you aggressive.

It is surely better to know that your worst enemy is right there in your own heart. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 456

We all have complexes; it is a highly banal and uninteresting fact. Even the incest complex which you can find anywhere if you look for it is terribly banal and therefore
uninteresting.

It is only interesting to know what people do with their complexes. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 94

The people who fancy they are sure of themselves are the ones who are truly unsure.

Our whole life is unsure, so a feeling of unsureness is much nearer to the truth than the illusion and bluff of sureness.

In the long run it is the better adapted man who triumphs, not the wrongly self-confident, who is at the mercy of dangers from without and within. ~Carl Jung, CW 10. Para 18

It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference.

But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence. ~Carl Jung, CW 60, Para 307

That the greatest effects come from the smallest causes has become patently clear not only in physics but in the field of psychological research as well.

How often in the critical moments of life everything hangs on what appears to be a mere nothing! 59:408

People who strive to be excessively ethical, who always think, feel, and act altruistically and idealistically, avenge themselves for their intolerable ideals by a subtly planned
maliciousness, of which they are naturally not conscious as such, but which leads to misunderstandings and unhappy situations.

All these difficulties appear to them as “especially unfortunate circumstances,” or the fault and the malice of other people, or as tragic complications.

Consciously they imagine they are rid of the conflict, but it is still there, unseen, to be stumbled over at every step. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 62

To strive for perfection is a high ideal.

But I say: “Fulfil something you are able to fulfil rather than run after what you will never achieve.”

Nobody is perfect.

Remember the saying: “None is good but God alone” [Luke 18:19], ^”^^ nobody can be.

It is an illusion.

We can modestly strive to fulfil ourselves and to be as complete human beings as possible, and that will give us trouble enough. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 149

If a man is endowed with an ethical sense and is convinced of the sanctity of ethical values, he is on the surest road to a conflict of duty.

And although this looks desperately like a moral catastrophe, it alone makes possible a higher differentiation of ethics and a broadening of consciousness.

A conflict of duty forces us to examine our conscience and thereby to discover the shadow. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 17

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort.

To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.

This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 14

To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light.

Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self.

Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 872

Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 335

Only an exceedingly naive and unconscious person could imagine that he is in a position to avoid sin.

Psychology can no longer afford childish illusions of this kind; it must ensue the truth and declare that unconsciousness is not only no excuse but is actually one of the most heinous sins.

Human law may exempt it from punishment, but Nature avenges herself more mercilessly, for it is nothing to her whether a man is conscious of his sin or not. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 676

Christ the ideal took upon himself the sins of the world.

But if the ideal is wholly outside then the sins of the individual are also outside, and consequently he is more of a fragment than ever, since superficial misunderstanding conveniently enables him, quite literally, to “cast his sins upon Christ” and thus to evade his deepest responsibilities—which is contrary to the spirit of Christianity. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 9

“Redemption” does not mean that a burden is taken from one’s shoulders which one was never meant to bear.

Only the “complete” person knows how unbearable man is to himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para :125

If only people could realize what an enrichment it is to find one’s own guilt, what a sense of honour and spiritual dignity! ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 416

Only the living presence of the eternal images can lend the human psyche a dignity which makes it morally possible for a man to stand by his own soul, and be convinced
that it is worth his while to persevere with himself.

Only then will he realize that the conflict is in him, that the discord and tribulation are his riches, which should not be squandered by attacking others; and that, if fate should
exact a debt from him in the form of guilt, it is a debt to himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 511

I cannot love anyone if I hate myself.

That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves.

That is not a virtue but a vice.

And thus, from so-called goodness, which was once really good, something has arisen which is no longer good; it has become an evasion.

Nowadays any coward can make himself respectable by going to church and loving his neighbour.

But it is simply an untrue state, an artificial world. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 88

The healthy man does not torture others—generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 56

To live in perpetual flight from ourselves is a bitter thing, and to live with ourselves demands a number of Christian virtues which we then have to apply to our own case, such
as patience, love, faith, hope, and humility.

It is all very fine to make our neighbour happy by applying them to him, but the demon of self-admiration so easily claps us on the back and says, “Well done!”

And because this is a great psychological truth, it must be stood on its head for an equal number of people so as to give the devil something to carp at. But—does it make us happy when we have to apply these virtues to ourselves?

when I am the recipient of my own gifts, the least among my brothers whom I must take to my bosom?

when I must admit that I need all my patience, my love, my faith, and even my humility, and that I myself am my own devil, the antagonist who always wants the opposite in everything?

Can we ever really endure ourselves?

“Do unto others . . .”—this is as true of evil as of good. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 522

Instead of waging war on himself it is surely better for a man to learn to tolerate himself, and to convert his inner difficulties into real experiences instead of expending them
in useless fantasies.

Then at least he lives, and does not waste his life in fruitless struggles.

If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better.

A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbour; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 439

We understand another person in the same way as we understand, or seek to understand, ourselves.

What we do not understand in ourselves we do not understand in the other person either.

So there is plenty to ensure that his image will be for the most part subjective.

As we know, even an intimate friendship is no guarantee of objective knowledge. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 508

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 147

Certainly strife and misunderstanding will always be among the props of the tragi-comedy of human existence, but it is none the less undeniable that the advance of civilization has led from the law of the jungle to the establishment of courts of justice and standards of right and wrong which are above the contending parties.

It is my conviction that a basis for the settlement of conflicting views would be found in the recognition of different types of attitude — a recognition not only of the existence of such types, but also of the fact that every man is so imprisoned in his type that he is simply incapable of fully understanding another standpoint.

Failing a recognition of this exacting demand, a violation of the other standpoint is practically inevitable. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 847

We still attribute to the other fellow all the evil and inferior qualities that we do not like to recognize in ourselves, and therefore have to criticize and attack him, when all
that has happened is that an inferior “soul” has emigrated from one person to another.

The world is still full of betes noires and scapegoats, just as it formerly teemed with witches and werewolves. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 130

It is just the beam in one’s own eye that enables one to detect the mote in one’s brother’s eye.

The beam in one’s own eye does not prove that one’s brother has no mote in his. But the impairment of one’s own vision might easily give rise to a general theory that all motes are beams.

The recognition and taking to heart of the subjective determination of knowledge in general, and of psychological knowledge in particular, are basic conditions for the scientific
and impartial evaluation of a psyche different from that of the observing subject.

These conditions are fulfilled only when the observer is sufficiently informed about the nature and scope of his own personality.

He can, however, be sufficiently informed only when he has in large measure freed himself from the levelling influence of collective opinions and thereby arrived at a clear conception of his own individuality. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 10

We always start with the naive assumption that we are masters in our own house.

Hence we must first accustom ourselves to the thought that, in our most intimate psychic life as well, we live in a kind of house which has doors and windows to the world, but that, although the objects or contents of this world act upon us, they do not belong to us.

For many people this hypothesis is by no means easy to conceive, just as they do not find it at all easy to understand and to accept the fact that their neighbour’s psychology is
not necessarily identical with their own. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 329

Everyone who becomes conscious of even a fraction of his unconscious gets outside his own time and social stratum into a kind of solitude. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 258

The real existence of an enemy upon whom one can foist ofT everything evil is an enormous relief to one’s conscience.

You can then at least say, without hesitation, who the devil is; you are quite certain that the cause of your misfortune is outside, and not in your own attitude. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 518

Our unwillingness to see our own faults and the projection of them onto others is the source of most quarrels, and the strongest guarantee that injustice, animosity, and persecution will not easily die out. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 15

A man’s hatred is always concentrated on the thing that makes him conscious of his bad qualities. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 453

When we allow ourselves to be irritated out of our wits by something, let us not suppose that the cause of our irritation lies simply and solely outside us, in the irritating thing
or person.

In that way we simply endow them with the power to put us into the state of irritation, and possibly into one of insomnia or indigestion.

We then turn around and unhesitatingly condemn the object of offence, while all the time we are raging against an unconscious part of ourselves which is projected into the exasperating object. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 516

You always become the thing you fight the most. ~Carl Jung, BBC Face to Face Interview, Para 119

Everything that works from the unconscious appears projected on others.

Not that these others are wholly without blame, for even the worst projection is at least hung on a hook, perhaps a very small one, but still a hook offered by the other person. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 99

A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 391

Projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face. ~Carl Jung, CW 9 ii, Para 17

The essential thing is that we should be able to stand up to our judgment of ourselves.

From outside this attitude looks like self-righteousness, but it is so only if we are incapable of criticizing ourselves.

If we can exercise self-criticism, criticism from outside will affect us only on the outside and not pierce to the heart, for we feel that we have a sterner critic within us than any who could judge us from without.

And anyway, there are as many opinions as there are heads to think them.

We come to realize that our own judgment has as much value as the judgment of others.

One cannot please everybody, therefore it is better to be at peace with oneself. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 911

In each of us there is a pitiless judge who makes us feel guilty even if we are not conscious of having done anything wrong.

Although we do not know what it is, it is as though it were known somewhere. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 164

How can anyone see straight when he does not even see himself and the darkness he unconsciously carries with him into all his dealings? ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 140

Nothing in us ever remains quite uncontradicted, and consciousness can take up no position which will not call up, somewhere in the dark corners of the psyche, a negation
or a compensatory effect, approval or resentment.

This process of coming to terms with the Other in us is well worthwhile, because in this way we get to know aspects of our nature which we would not allow anybody else to show
us and which we ourselves would never have admitted. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 706

The “other” in us always seems alien and unacceptable; but if we let ourselves be aggrieved the feeling sinks in, and we are the richer for this little bit of self-knowledge ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 918

Only a fool is interested in other people’s guilt, since he cannot alter it.

The wise man learns only from his own guilt.

He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me?

To find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 152

To know where the other person makes a mistake is of little value.

It only becomes interesting when you know where you make the mistake, for then you can do something about it. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 424

We are that pair of Dioscuri, one of whom is mortal and the other immortal, and who, though always together, can never be made completely one.

The transformation processes strive to approximate them to one another, but our consciousness is aware of resistances, because the other person seems strange and uncanny, and because we cannot get accustomed to the idea that we are not absolute master in our own house.

We should prefer to be always “I” and nothing else.

But we are confronted with that inner friend or foe, and whether he is our friend or our foe depends on ourselves. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 235

The “other” may be just as one-sided in one way as the ego is in another. And yet the conflict between them may give rise to truth and meaning—but only if the ego is willing
to grant the other its rightful personality. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 237

For one can fall victim to possession if one does not understand betimes why one is possessed.

One should ask oneself for once: Why has this idea taken possession of me? What does that mean in regard to myself?

A modest doubt like this can save us from falling head first into the idea and vanishing forever. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 72

Nowhere are we closer to the sublime secret of all origination than in the recognition of our own selves, whom we always think we know already.

Yet we know the immensities of space better than we know our own depths, where —even though we do not understand it—we can listen directly to the throb of creation itself. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 737

Conscience, and particularly a bad conscience, can be a gift from heaven, a veritable grace if used in the interests of the higher self-criticism.

And self-criticism, in the sense of an introspective, discriminating activity, is indispensable in any attempt to understand your own psychology.

If you have done something that puzzles you and you ask yourself what could have prompted you to such an action, you need the sting of a bad conscience and its discriminating
faculty in order to discover the real motive of your behaviour.

It is only then that you can see what motives are governing your actions.

The sting of a bad conscience even spurs you on to discover things that were unconscious before, and in this way you may be able to cross the threshold of the unconscious and take cognizance of those impersonal forces which make you an unconscious instrument of the wholesale murderer in man. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 86

Self-knowledge, in the form of an examination of conscience, is demanded by Christian ethics.

They were very pious people who maintained that self-knowledge paves the way to knowledge of God. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 661

We say that it is egoistic or “morbid” to be preoccupied with oneself; one’s own company is the worst, “it makes you melancholy”—such are the glowing testimonials accorded
to our human make-up.

They are evidently deeply ingrained in our Western minds.

Whoever thinks in this way has obviously never asked himself what possible pleasure other people could find in the company of such a miserable coward. 1046:323

Brooding is a sterile activity which runs round in a circle, never reaching a sensible goal.

It is not work but a weakness, even a vice.

On the other hand, when you’ve got the blues it is legitimate to make yourself an object of serious study, just as you can earnestly search your conscience without
lapsing into moral weakness.

Anyone who is in bad odour with himself or feels in need of improvement, any

one who, in brief, wishes to “grow,” must take counsel with himself.

For unless you change yourself inwardly too, outward changes in the situation are either worthless or actually harmful. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 16

Every advance, every conceptual achievement of mankind, has been connected with an advance in self-awareness: man differentiated himself from the object and faced
Nature as something distinct from her.

Any reorientation of psychological attitude will have to follow the same road. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 523

The foremost of all illusions is that anything can ever satisfy anybody.

That illusion stands behind all that is unendurable in life and in front of all progress, and it is one of the most difficult things to overcome. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 905

It is not enough to jump up, puff yourself out, and shout, “I take the responsibility!”

Not only mankind but fate itself would like to know who has promised to take this great step and whether it is someone who can take the responsibility.

We all know that anyone can say so.

It is not the position that makes the man, but the man doing his work.

Therefore self-searching, with the help of one or more persons, is (or rather should be) the essential condition for taking on a higher responsibility, even if it be only that of
realizing the meaning of individual life in the best possible form and to the fullest possible extent.

Nature always does that, though without responsibility, for this is the fated and divinely allotted task of man. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 17

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. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para:413

The judgment of others is not in itself a standard of value, it may be no more than a useful piece of information.

The individual has a right, indeed it is his duty, to set up and apply his own standard of value.

In the last resort ethics are the concern of the individual. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 912

If ever there was a time when self-reflection was the absolutely necessary and only right thing, it is now, in our present catastrophic epoch.

Yet whoever reflects upon himself is bound to strike upon the frontiers of the unconscious, which contains what above all else he needs to know. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 4

Every individual needs revolution, inner division, overthrow of the existing order, and renewal, but not by forcing these things upon his neighbours under the hypocritical cloak of Christian love or the sense of social responsibility or any of the other beautiful euphemisms for unconscious urges to personal power.

Individual self-reflection, return of the individual to the ground of human nature, to his own deepest being with its individual and social destiny here is the beginning of a cure for that blindness which reigns at the present hour. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 5

I am neither spurred on by excessive optimism nor in love with high ideals, but am merely concerned with the fate of the individual human being—that infinitesimal unit on whom a world depends, and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message aright, even God seeks his goal, 106:588