G K > G's Quotes

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

“I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“We know that we do not conquer thirst by repressing it.”
― Carl Jung

“In order to make clear what this fourth stage has in view, and to throw some light on the curious term 'transformation,' we must first take account of those psychic needs of man which were not given a place in the other stages.

In other words, we must ascertain what could seem more desirable or lead further than the claim to be a normally adapted, social being.

Nothing is more useful or fitting than to be a normal human being; but the very notion of a 'normal human being' suggests a restriction to the average – as does also the concept of adaptation.

It is only a man who as things stand, already finds it difficult to come to terms with the everyday world who can see in this restriction a desirable improvement: a man, let us say, whose neurosis unfits him for normal life.

To be 'normal' is a splendid ideal for the unsuccessful, for all those who have not yet found an adaptation.

But for people who have far more ability than the average, for whom it was never hard to gain successes and to accomplish their share of the world’s work-for them restriction to the normal signifies the bed of Procrustes, unbearable boredom, infernal sterility and hopelessness.

As a consequence there are many people who become neurotic because they are only normal, as there are people who are neurotic because they cannot become normal.

For the former the very thought that you want to educate them to normality is a nightmare; their deepest need is really to be able to lead 'abnormal' lives.”
― C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

“It is obviously not enough for him to know how and why he fell ill, for to understand the causes of an evil does very little towards curing it.”
― Carl Jung

“A man can hope for satisfaction and fulfillment only in what he does not yet possess; he cannot find pleasure in something of which he has already had too much. To be a socially adapted being hanse charms for one whom becomes a borer the man who knows how, whereas the eternal bungler cherishes the secret longing to be right for once in some distant future.”
― C. G Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”
― C.G. Jung

“There's no coming to consciousness without pain.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”
― Carl Jung

“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.”
― C.G. Jung

“Be the man through whom you wish to influence others.”
― C. G Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

“Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do.”
― Jean Piaget

“What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see.”
― Jean Piaget

“The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.”
― Albert Einstein

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that can be given a name.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.

These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free — and how much more the spirit who has become free — spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior.

How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves; most beautiful type: Julius Caesar. This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong — otherwise one will never become strong.

Those large hothouses for the strong — for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known — the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand it: as something one has or does not have, something one wants, something one conquers.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Pick up a bee from kindness, and learn the limitations of kindness.”
― Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams

“If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere”
― Henry Kissinger

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The devil finds work for idle hands. Bad thoughts find empty heads. So he kept his hands busy and his mind occupied.”
― Alex North, The Whisper Man

“And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“it is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince