Carl Jung Quotes

Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.

... a moral skunk .... [who has] debauched America ...

It is impossible to deny that dishonest men often grow rich and famous, becoming powerful in their parish or in parliament. Their portraits grace shop windows; and they live and die respected. This success is theirs; yet it is not the success which a noble soul will envy.

As long as there are religions, there are going to be people who are hiding their rottenness behind the veil of religion.

He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

Whenever there are great virtues, it's a sure sign something's wrong.

Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

… they seem to be such as would not swear, whore, nor be drunk, but they would lie, cozen and deceive.

When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honor is a private station.

He is only honest who is not discovered.

There are some acts of justice which corrupt those who perform them.

If the chief party ... be corrupt, you must follow their humor and indulge them, and in that case honesty and virtue are pernicious.

If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who will contract out the messy things in life: the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show: and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery.

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

We suppose mankind more honest than they are.

When I reflect on the pompous titles bestowed on unworthy men, I feel an indignity that instructs me to despise the absurdity. The Honourable plunderer of his country, or the Right Honourable murderer of mankind, create such a contrast of ideas as exhibit a monster rather than a man. Virtue is inflamed at the violation, and sober reason calls it nonsense.

My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth there's hardly any difference.

The moral state of society was most terrible. We stole from ourselves, took and gave bribes, lied in the reports, in newspapers, from high podiums. And all of this from top to bottom; from bottom to top.

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.

My native land is a slave of heathenism, men's god is their belly, and they live only for the present. The richer a man, the holier.

I prefer a real villain to a false hero.