James Hillman Quotes

Since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking.

Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.

I think a lot of things can be misconstrued in a lot of ways. And I think if people open their minds more, and they try to look deeper into something than just something that is a very big, hot, fiery button to hide behind...I think if people looked into something bigger that I was trying to speak upon, they wouldn't be so easy to fire back silly, miscellaneous things.

What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading. It is the ideas stirred in your own mind, the ideas which are a reflection of your own thinking, which make you an interesting person

I do not like talking casually to people - it does not interest me - and most of them are unwilling to talk at all seriously.

I guess I'm not really fond of just chit-chatting. I want to learn something and have an experience.

What I like are films that take me seriously, that don't treat me as more stupid than I am.

If with open mind one reads and observes industriously and long; if in so doing one covers a wide field and so covering reflects in terms of realism, he is likely, soon or late, to be brought to a sudden consciousness that Man is an unknown quantity and his existence unsuspected.

To live is to think.

I don't see myself as a rock star. I don't see myself in that way. I'm interested in work that offers some sort of critical dialogue.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

I think I tend to live in sort of a meta state of existence where I'm always analyzing and analyzing whatever I'm going through at any given moment, and a lot of times I'll reflect back on and go, 'Oh look at that - if I acted this way when that happened, I might not have thought of that that way.'

The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.

I'm not about sound bites. I'm about substance.

I try to always bring topics to the table that matter, topics that I think need to be discussed and reflected on.

I want people to be awake. I want them to be aware.

I really love having conversations and deconstructing things. I don't mind not having a laugh every second. Sometimes things deserve a little more discussion, and then you can have some fun after that.

Thinking isn't something you think about. It comes naturally. Thinking involves many things. It involves being an observer. It involves analyzing things, taking in what's around you in the world and finding how to make it inspire your work or turn it into a lesson to teach your children; it's paying attention to details. That's what thinking is: processing.

It's when I am fully conscious that I ask questions.

I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them, they might as well cut bread and butter. Unless you give at least 45 minutes of careful, fatiguing reflection upon what you are reading, your minutes are chiefly wasted.

I think the act of talking about something - with a friend, or someone in your family, or someone you care about, and you're discussing something that you both admire - can often sharpen your thoughts about what you've read or seen and help you think more clearly about it.

Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.

It is a faculty of the human mind to become what it contemplates, and to act in unison with its object.

All my life I've been looking for someone intelligent to talk to.

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year. Unless you give at least 45 minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your 90 minutes of a night are chiefly wasted.