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Religion Quotes by Carl Jung

49 Religion quotes by Carl Jung

All Religion quotes Carl Jung’s page

Carl Jung talks about the spirit being the inner life of the body and the church often resisting new experiences. He explains that symbols try to picture the spirit’s hidden nature and that personal growth needs anxiety and ambiguity. The quotes also say that true faith comes from spontaneous religious experience, not just consciousness.

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Nature is not matter only. She is also a spirit

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All neurotics seek the religious

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The unconscious psyche believes in life after death

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Religion is a defense against the experience of God.

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The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith.

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It is not for us . . . to send out missionaries to foreign peoples; it is our task to build up…

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It is the function of the Church to oppose all original experience, because this can only be unorthodox.

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We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself.

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Nothing is more repulsive than a furtively prurient spirituality; it is just as unsavory as gross sensuality.

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The world of gods and spirits is truly 'nothing but' the collective unconscious inside me.

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You must live life in such a spirit that you make in every moment the best of possibilities.

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When religion stops talking about animals it will be all downhill.

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The seat of faith...is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual's faith into immediate relation with God.

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Only a life lived in a certain spirit is worth living. It is a remarkable fact that a life lived entirely from…

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Whoever is afraid must needs be dependent; a weak thing needs support. That is why the primitive mind, from deep psychological necessity,…

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The spirit is the life of the body seen from within, and the body the outward manifestation of the life of the…

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The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual's faith into immediate relation with God.

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Gnosticism was stamped out completely and its remnants are so badly mangled that special study is needed to get any insight at…

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The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet…

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A residual sea of symbols which is shared by all mankind, usually accessed through dreams or altered states, and from which cultures…

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My interests drew me in different directions. On the one hand I was powerfully attracted by science, with its truths based on…

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In thirty years I have treated many patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life, every one of them…

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Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since…

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By a symbol I do not mean an allegory or a sign, but an image that describes in the best possible way…

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We are so accustomed to the apparently rational nature of our world that we can scarcely imagine anything happening that cannot be…

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Just as man as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual…

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Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry god... No river contains a spirit... no snake the embodiment of wisdom, no…

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The Christian religion seems to have fulfilled its great biological purpose, in so far as we are able to judge. It has…

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Eternal truth needs a human language that alters with the spirit of the times.

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Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in.

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Our intellect has achieved the most tremendous things, but in the meantime our spiritual dwelling has fallen into disrepair.

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“Psychological or spiritual development always requires a greater capacity for anxiety and ambiguity.”

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One of the main functions of formalized religion is to protect people against a direct experience of God.

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“One of the main functions of organized religion is to protect people against a direct experience of God.”

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There is a deep need in the world just now for guidance - almost any sort of spiritual guidance.

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If our religion is based on salvation, our chief emotions will be fear and trembling. If our religion is based on wonder,…

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So often among so-called "primitives" one comes across spiritual personalities who immediately inspire respect, as though they were the fully matured products…

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The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankind's evolution born anew in the brain structure of every individual.

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No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has…

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The whole point of Jesus's life was not that we should become exactly like him, but that we should become ourselves in…

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More by Carl Jung

No man can change himself into anything from sheer reason; he can only change into what he potentially is.

Whenever we touch nature we get clean. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a…

The self is defined psychologically as the psychic totality of the individual. Anything that a [person] postulates as being a greater totality than [oneself]…

Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. Whenever the Westerner hears the word “psychological,” it always sounds to him…

To be normal is the ultimate aim of the unsuccessful.

Like the sea itself, the unconscious yields an endless and self-replenishing abundance of creatures, a wealth beyond our fathoming.

Astrology is knocking at the gates of our universities: A Tübingen professor has switched over to astrology and a course on astrology was given…

Synchronicity reveals the meaningful connections between the subjective and objective world.

Instinct is like Nature herself - prodigiously conservative, and yet transcending her own historical conditions in her acts of creation.

Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in.

“He would have lived countless times over the life of the individual, of the family, tribe and people, and he would possess the living…

People learn from who we are, rather than what we say, and to believe otherwise is a disease of the mind.

Neurosis is an inner cleavage-the state of being at war with oneself.

It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.

Life is a luminous pause between two mysteries that are yet one.