"The fact that a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing ... He <i>must</i> obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths ... There are not a few who are called awake by the summons of the voice, whereupon they are at once set apart from the others, feeling themselves confronted with a problem about which the others know nothing. In most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, for any understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices. "You are no different from anybody else," they will chorus or, "there's no such thing," and even if there is such a thing, it is immediately branded as "morbid"...He is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. "His <i>own</i> law!" everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is <i>the</i> law...The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realization — absolute and unconditional — of its own particular law ... To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being ... he has failed to realize his own life's meaning."

English
Share Share
Collect this quote
About C.G. Jung

Carl Gustav Jung (IPA: [ˈkarl ˈgʊstaf ˈjʊŋ]) (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Go Premium

Support Quotosaurus while enjoying an ad-free experience and premium features.

View Plans

Additional quotes by C.G. Jung

It is painful — there is no denying it — to interpret radiant things from the shadow-side, and thus in a measure reduce them to their origins in dreary filth. But it seems to me to be an imperfection in things of beauty, and a weakness in man, if an explanation from the shadow-side has a destructive effect.