psychology quotes from influential philosophers, authors and people
"The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization."
553
"The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside."
559
"The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises."
560
"The only person with whom you have to compare ourselves, is that you in the past."
561
"Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways."
565
"The whole is more than the sum of its parts."
595
"There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless."
640
"Man—every man—is an end in himself."
858
"I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts."
941
"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."
966
"To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness."
1002
"He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool."
1052
"Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see."
1069
"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."
50
"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."
51
"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."
52
"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism."
53
"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."
54
"The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers."
55
"Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain."
56
"Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?"
57
"The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images."
58
"Resistance to the organized mass can be affected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself."
59
"It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts."
60
"We shall probably get nearest to the truth if we think of the conscious and personal psyche as resting upon the broad basis of an inherited and universal psychic disposition which is as such unconscious, and that our personal psyche bears the same relation to the collective psyche as the individual to society."
61
"We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them."
62
"Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics."
63
"The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity."
64
"I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life."
65
"If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool."
66
"Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also."
67
"Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune."
68
"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."
69
"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses."
70
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."
160
"The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases."
161
"Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble."
162
"A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning."
163
"We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them."
164
"In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a 'continent,' a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness."
165
"Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us."
166
"Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose."
167
"Idleness is the parent of psychology."
196
"The word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness."
303