Swiss psychologist (1875 - 1961) • 33 quotes.
Displaying all 33 quotes
- The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
- Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
- All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
- The word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
- An understanding heart is everything is a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
- Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.
- Religion is a defense against the experience of God.
- As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of being.
- Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
- We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
- Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
- Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
- I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God.
- The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
- As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.
- It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves.
- There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.
- Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being.
- Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
- The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
- The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
- As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
- Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.
- To me dreams are part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive but expresses something as best it can.
- I have always been impressed by the fact that there are a surprising number of individuals who never use their minds if they can avoid it, and an equal number who do use their minds, but in an amazingly stupid way.
- The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.
- Creative powers can just as easily turn out to be destructive. It rests solely with the moral personality whether they apply themselves to good things or to bad. And if this is lacking, no teacher can supply it or take its place
- The teacher pretended that algebra was a perfectly natural affair, to be taken for granted, whereas I didn't even know what numbers were. Mathematics classes became sheer terror and torture to me. I was so intimidated by my incomprehension that I did not dare to ask any questions.
- In studying the history of the human mind one is impressed again and again by the fact that the growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and that each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement. One could almost say that nothing is more hateful to man than to give up even a particle of his unconsciousness. Ask those who have tried to introduce a new idea!
- Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.
- If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.
- Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
- The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
