Blind acceptance never leads to a solution; at best it leads only to a standstill and is paid for heavily in the next generation.

Es wäre lächerliche und ungerechtfertigte Selbstüberhebung, wenn wir annehmen wollten, wir seien energischer oder intelligenter als das Altertum - unser Wissensstoff hat zugenommen, nicht aber die Intelligenz. Darum sind wir neuen Ideen gegenüber gerade so borniert und unfähig wie die Menschen in den dunklesten Zeiten des Altertums. An Wissen sind wir reich geworden, nicht aber an Weisheit.

[...] the really complex and unfamiliar part of the human mind, from which symbols are produced, is still virtually unexplored. It seems almost incredible that though we receive signals from it every night, deciphering these communications seems too tedious for any but a very few people to be bothered with. Man's greatest instrument, his psyche, is little thought of, and it is often directly mistrusted and despised. "It's only psychological" too often means: It is nothing.

The psyche’s attachment to the brain, i.e., its space-time limitation, is no longer as self-evident and incontrovertible as we have hitherto been led to believe. … It is not only permissible to doubt the absolute validity of space-time perception; it is, in view of the available facts, even imperative to do so.

As a consequence there are many people who becomeneurotic because they are only normal, as there arepeople who are neurotic because they cannot becomenormal. For the former the very thought that you wantto educate them to normality is a nightmare; theirdeepest need is really to be able to lead "abnormal"lives.

The term "self" seems a suitable one for the unconscious substrate whose actual exponent in consciousness is the ego. The ego stands to the self as the moved to the mover, or as object to subject, because the determining factors that radiate outward from the self surround the ego on all sides and are therefore supraordinate to it. The self, like the unconscious, as an a priori existent out of which the ego evolves. It is, so to speak, an unconscious prefiguration of the ego. It is not I who create myself; rather, I happen to myself.

Life calls us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed this call because of childish laziness or timidity is threatened with neurosis. And once this has broken out, it becomes an increasingly valid reason for running away from life...

The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body, and they express its materiality every bit as much as the perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body

Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event.