Carl Jung Quotes

Forbear to spew out reason from your mind, but rather ponder everything with keen judgment; and if it seems true, own yourself vanquished, but, if it is false, gird up your loins to fight.

Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property.

Unscientific man is beset by a deplorable desire to have been right. The scientist is distinguished by a desire to be right.

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organized beliefs.

There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.

The effective thinker treats arrogance as the major sin of thinking.

Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt.

If I simply refrain from making a judgment in cases where I do not perceive the truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness, then it is clear that I am behaving correctly and avoiding error.

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

Liberalism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas - an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives.

We need a world where the values of science are celebrated: free inquiry, free speech and a healthy skepticism, all coupled with a sense of wonder, a respect for truth and an ability to reason.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

I realized there are no lobbyists for critical thinking, and I realized there are no lobbyists for bravery.

People who think honestly and deeply have a hostile attitude towards the public.

Logic is not satisfied with assertion. It cares nothing for the opinions of the great; nothing for the prejudices of the many, and least of all for the superstitions of the dead.

Incredulity is not wisdom.

Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.

You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake.

Skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.

Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency.

Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.