Carl Jung Quotes

I cannot remember a time when the question of why people behave as they do was not intensely interesting to me. The desire to understand was very important. When I was young, I was aware of the fact that much of the time, the reasons a person gave for his actions were not the actual reasons.

Human beings are very complex creatures. This desire, this greed, this love is very complex.

I'm drawn to the psychology of really interesting, flawed people.

Our unconscious is not more animal than our conscious, it is often even more human.

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.

I just think I'm better equipped to make a study of human personality than trying to get into the mind of animals.

The study of the human character opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul.

I think to try to understand human behavior and why people do what they do, and what in their lives have shaped them and impacted them to be who they are, it's something. I mean, that's my entire life.

I realised that people respond to banal things. They don't accept their own history, not participating in acceptance within their own being.

I'm very interested in what makes people tick; people are so weird and complicated.

I think you have to see the high highs and the low lows to get to the core of what makes us tick as people.

The twentieth century may well find historical status as the epoch in which man began to study himself as a scientific phenomenon.

I really do love psychology and philosophy but I'm no professional at these things. Because I love seeing the true side of humanity, as I've continued that, I have ultimately lent towards philosophy and psychology but it is not something in which I try to study.

One of my pleasures is observing people's behavior and pointing out the inconsistencies that we all sort of have at the center of our lives.

Humans are stupid. I'm ashamed to be human.

Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing.

I find it valid to understand man as an animal before I am prepared to know him as a man.

Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.

In youth there are always two forces fighting in people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles against the thing that reflects and remembers

Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.

Every other creature on the planet is doing its best. Only human beings hesitate about that.

What we call human nature, is actually human habit.

Ah! but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.

The more experience and insight I obtain into human nature, the more convinced do I become that the greater portion of a man is purely animal.