110+ James Hillman Quotes On Education, Religion And Betrayal

James Hillman was an American psychologist who developed a form of depth psychology known as archetypal psychology. He was a prolific author, writing on topics such as dreams, the imagination, death, and the soul. Hillman's work focused on the power of the unconscious and the importance of imagination in understanding the self and the world. Following is our collection on famous quotes by James Hillman on education, leadership, religion.

Top 10 James Hillman Quotes

1. All we can do when we think of kids today is think of more hours of school, earlier age at the computer, and curfews. Who would want to grow up in that world?
2. Anytime you’re gonna grow, you’re gonna lose something. You’re losing what you’re hanging onto to keep safe. You’re losing habits that you’re comfortable with, you’re losing familiarity.
3. Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.
4. We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently.
5. Just stop for a minute and you'll realize you're happy just being. I think it's the pursuit that screws up happiness. If we drop the pursuit, it's right here.
6. It's important to ask yourself, How am I useful to others? What do people want from me? That may very well reveal what you are here for.
7. To see the angel in the malady requires an eye for the invisible, a certain blinding of one eye and an opening of the other to elsewhere.
8. Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.
9. Open your heart, your gaze, to the visitations of angels, even if the gifts they bring may not be centeredness and balance but eccentricity and a wholly unfamiliar sense of pleasure called joy.
10. Psychology, so dedicated to awakening human consciousness, needs to wake itself up to one of the most ancient human truths: we cannot be studied or cured apart from the planet.

James Hillman Short Quotes

• You don't know what you're going to get into when you follow your bliss.
• I think we're miserable partly because we have only one god, and that's economics.
• The transfiguration of matter occurs through wonder.
• To hope for nothing, to expect nothing, to demand nothing. This is analytical despair.
• We dull our lives by the way we conceive them.
• Vessels expose the invisible Zeitgeist, the visible formed by the invisible.
• Anything you attend to carefully can bring blessing.
• I can no longer be sure whether the psyche is in me or whether I'm in the psyche.
• I tend to think that you fulfill your own destiny, whether you realize it or not.
• We carve out risk-free lives where nothing happens.

James Hillman Quotes About Love

The psyche is highly flammable material. So we are always wrapping things in asbestos, keeping our images and fantasies at arm's length because they are so full of love — James Hillman

Attention is the cardinal psychological virtue. On it depends perhaps the other cardinal virtues, for there can hardly be faith nor hope nor love for anything unless it first receives attention. — James Hillman

By seeing differently, we do differently — James Hillman

James Hillman Quotes About Character

Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars. — James Hillman

You are born with a character; it is given, a gift, as the old stories say, from the guardians upon your birth...Each person enters the world called. — James Hillman

You may not become a celebrity. You may even experience lots of illness or divorce, or unhappiness. But I think there is still a thread of individual character that determines how you live through those things. — James Hillman

James Hillman Quotes About Power

The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles, or control? — James Hillman

Whether we like it or not, men have more of the offices, more of the higher jobs, more of the seats in Congress. Men need to re-examine what their power is. We need to understand how to use it. — James Hillman

Words, like angels, are powers which have invisible power over us. — James Hillman

James Hillman Quotes About Psychological

The culture is going into a psychological depression. We are concerned about our place in the world, about being competitive: Will my children have as much as I have? Will I ever own my own home? How can I pay for a new car? Are immigrants taking away my white world? — James Hillman

Many people nowadays who discover that they have a major symptom, whether psychological or physical, begin to study it. They get drawn very deeply into the area of their trouble. They want to know more than their doctor. That's a curious thing, and not at all the way it used to be. — James Hillman

Food is so fundamental, more so than sexuality, aggression, or learning, that it is astounding to realize the neglect of food and eating in depth psychology. — James Hillman

Beauty is something everybody longs for, needs, and tries to obtain in some way - whether through nature, or a man or a woman, or music, or whatever. The soul yearns for it. Psychology seems to have forgotten that. — James Hillman

People used to trust their doctor. They went to an expert. Now people have new ideas and are thinking for themselves. That's a very important change in our collective psychology. — James Hillman

Our life is psychological, and the purpose of life is to make psyche of it, to find connections between life and soul. — James Hillman

Psychology is ultimately mythology, the study of the stories of the soul. — James Hillman

I've found that contemporary psychology enrages me with its simplistic ideas of human life, and also its emptiness. — James Hillman

In the cosmology that's behind psychology, there is no reason for anyone to be here or do anything. — James Hillman

James Hillman Quotes About Imaginal

If there were a god of New York, it would be the Greek's Hermes, the Roman's Mercury. He embodies New York qualities: the quick exchange, the fastness of language and style, craftiness, the mixing of people and crossing of borders, imagination. — James Hillman

We need to get back to trusting our emotional rapport with children, to seeing a child's beauty and singling that child out. That's how the mentor system works - you're caught up in the fantasy of another person. Your imagination and their come together. — James Hillman

We vote for Perot. We think he's a great, marvelous, honest man. We send money to his campaign, even though he is one of the richest capitalists in our culture. Imagine, sending money to Perot! It's unbelievable, yet it's part of that worship of individuality. — James Hillman

James Hillman Quotes About Soul

The gift of an image is that it provides a place to watch your soul. — James Hillman

Until the culture recognizes the legitimacy of growing down, each person in the culture struggles blindly to make sense of the darkness that the soul requires to deepen into life. — James Hillman

Pathology is not a problem to be solved, but the soul's way of working on itself. — James Hillman

We forget that the soul has its own ancestors. — James Hillman

Each morning, we return from the dream soul trying to adjust to the day world, that moment when the two souls exchange places in the driver’s seat. — James Hillman

As Plotinus tells us, we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belongs to its necessity. — James Hillman

Loss means losing what was We want to change but we don't want to lose. Without time for loss, we don't have time for soul. — James Hillman

The new age self-help phenomenon is pretty mushy, but it's also very American. Our history is filled with traveling preachers and quack medicine and searches for the soul. I don't see this as a new thing. I think the new age is part of a phenomenon that's been there all along. — James Hillman

Without time for loss you don't have time for soul. — James Hillman

Follow the lead of your symptoms, for there’s usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul. — James Hillman

James Hillman Quotes About People

You know, people come to therapy really for a blessing. Not so much to fix what's broken, but to get what's broken blessed. — James Hillman

Too many people have been analyzing their pasts, their childhoods, their memories, their parents, and realizing that it doesn't do anything-or that it doesn't do enough. — James Hillman

I think there is such a thing as a bad seed that comes to flower in certain people. The danger with that theory is that we begin to look for those "troublemakers" early on and try to weed them out. That's very dangerous, because it could work against kids who are just routine troublemakers. — James Hillman

I sometimes get short-tempered in a public situation because I think, Oh God, I can't go back over that again. I can't put that into a two-word answer. I can't. Wherever I go, people say, "Can I ask you a quick question?" It's always, "a quick question." Well, my answers are slow. — James Hillman

Fear is a huge thing for older people. — James Hillman

We approach people the same way we approach our cars. We take the poor kid to a doctor and ask, What's wrong with him, how much will it cost, and when can I pick him up? — James Hillman

James Hillman Quotes About Society

It's very hard in our adversarial society to find a third view. Take journalism, where everything is always presented as one person against another: "Now we're going to hear the opposing view." There is never a third view. — James Hillman

Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong. If a kid is having trouble or is discouraged, the problem is not just inside the kid; it's also in the system, the society. — James Hillman

We're an air bag society that wants guarantees on everything that we buy. We want to be able to take everything back and get another one. We want a 401-k plan and Social Security. — James Hillman

James Hillman Famous Quotes And Sayings

Aging is no accident. It is necessary to the human condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose: the fulfillment and confirmation of one’s character. — James Hillman

In the history of the treatment of depression, there was the dunking stool, purging of the bowels of black bile, hoses, attempts to shock the patient. All of these represent hatred or aggression towards what depression represents in the patient. — James Hillman

How can we know ourselves by ourselves? . . . Soul needs intimate connection, not only to individuate, but simply to live. For this we need relationships of the profoundest kind through which we can realize ourselves, where self-revelation is possible, where interest in and love for soul is paramount. — James Hillman

Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable. — James Hillman

Yes, there's genetics. Yes, there are chromosomes. Yes, there's biology. Yes, there are environment, sociology, parenting, economics, class, and all of that. But there is something else, as well. — James Hillman

When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition. — James Hillman

Each of us needs an adequate biography: How do I put together into a coherent image the pieces of my life? How do I find the basic plot of my story? — James Hillman

Art, for example, becomes "art therapy." When patients make music, it becomes "music therapy." When the arts are used for "therapy" in this way, they are degraded to a secondary position. — James Hillman

The Greek idea of fate is moira, which means "portion." Fate rules a portion of your life. But there is more to life than just fate. There is also genetics, environment, economics, and so on. So it's not all written in the book before you get here, such that you don't have to do anything. That's fatalism. — James Hillman

Yes, we worship the idea of the "self-made man" - otherwise we'd go on strike against Bill Gates having all that money! We worship that idea. — James Hillman

How can Hitler, or some other murderer, appear in this world? I don't think any single theory can account for the phenomenon, and I think it's a mistake to try to reduce it to being brutalized by your parents or having grown up in some horrible situation - like Charles Manson. — James Hillman

From my perspective as a depth psychologist, I see that those who have a connection with story are in better shape and have better prognosis than those to whom story must be introduced. — James Hillman

The self divided is precisely where the self is authentically located. . . We all have identity crises because a single identity is a delusion of the monotheistic mind. . . Authenticity is in the illusion, playing it, seeing through it from within as we play it, like an actor who sees through his mask and can only see in this way. — James Hillman

I think the worst atmosphere for a six-year-old is one in which there are no expectations whatsoever. That is, it's worse for the child to grow up in a vacuum where "whatever you do is alright, I'm sure you'll succeed." That is a statement of disinterest. It says, "I really have no fantasies for you at all." — James Hillman

Aptitude can show calling, but it isn't the only indicator. Ineptitude or dysfunction may reveal calling more than talent, curiously enough. — James Hillman

I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result. — James Hillman

The comic spirit masquerades in all things we say and do. We are each a clown and do not need to put on a white face. — James Hillman

We must look back over our lives and look at some of the accidents and curiosities and oddities and troubles and sicknesses and begin to see more in those things than we saw before. It raises questions, so that when peculiar little accidents happen, you ask whether there is something else at work in your life. — James Hillman

By setting up a universe which tends to hold everything we do, see, and say in the sway of its cosmos, an archetype is best comparable with a God — James Hillman

What I try to point out is the role an ordinary person can have in seeing the child's destiny. You have to have a feeling for the child. — James Hillman

Too often in the west we fail to realize that even in eastern disciplines the spiritual life is not meant as an escape from the worldly life. There is karma to be fulfilled on earth, within the dharma of necessity. — James Hillman

I see happiness as a by-product. I don't think you can pursue happiness. I think that phrase is one of the very few mistakes the Founding Fathers made. — James Hillman

We are human less by virtue of our ideal goals than by the vice of our inferiority. — James Hillman

You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. — James Hillman

It's very important for men to look downward, to the next generation. — James Hillman

We need to work on the world so it will not be so oppressive. — James Hillman

The easy path of aging is to become a thick-skinned, unbudging curmudgeon, a battle-ax. To grow soft and sweet is the harder way. — James Hillman

I don't think anything changes until ideas change. — James Hillman

Psychotherapy makes every problem a subjective, inner problem. And that's not where the problems come from. They come from the environment, the cities, the economy, the racism. They come from architecture, school systems, capitalism, exploitation. They come from many places that psychotherapy does not address. Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong. — James Hillman

Tell me what you yearn for and I shall tell you who you are. We are what we reach for, the idealized image that drives our wandering. — James Hillman

'Mediocre' tends to mean 'undistinguished', while snobs enjoy their distinguishing hallmarks of style - how they wear clothes, use words, where they go and gather and gossip. ...Whatever the circumstances the genius has put you into, the fact of individuality defends the soul against all class-action claims. No soul is mediocre, whatever your personal taste for conventionality, whatever your personal record of middling achievements. — James Hillman

...you find your genius by looking in the mirror of your life. Your visible image shows your inner truth, so when you're estimating others, what you see is what you get. It therefore becomes critically important to see generously, or you will get only what you see; to see sharply, so that you discern the mix of traits rather than a generalized lump; and to see deeply into dark shadows, or else you will be deceived. — James Hillman

Many of our troubles are chronic. Life is chronic. — James Hillman

An individual's harmony with his or her 'own deep self' requires not merely a journey to the interior but a harmonizing with the environmental world. — James Hillman

The moment the angel enters a life it enters an environment. We are ecological from day one. — James Hillman

It's a terrible cruelty of predatory capitalism: both parents now have to work. A family has to have two incomes in order to buy the things that are desirable in our culture. So the degradation of motherhood - the sense that motherhood isn't itself a calling - also arises from economic pressure. — James Hillman

It's better to go into the world half-cocked than not to go into the world at all. — James Hillman

Reconnecting to the animal means getting to a more sensitive, more artful and more humorous place in the psyche. — James Hillman

It's not enough just to be a mother. It's not only the social pressure on mothers by certain kinds of feminism and other sources. There is also economic pressure on them. — James Hillman

So when you consider the archetypal, historical, and cultural background of whatever you do, it gives you a sense that your occupation can be a calling and not just a job. — James Hillman

Ecology movements, futurism, feminism, urbanism, protest and disarmament, personal individuation cannot alone save the world from the catastrophe inherent in our very idea of the world. They require a cosmological vision that saves the phenomenon 'world' itself, a move in soul that goes beyond measures of expediency to the archetypal source of our world's continuing peril: the fateful neglect, the repression, of the anima mundi. — James Hillman

Not just any talk is conversation; not any talk raises consciousness. Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said. That reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness; your mind's been moved. You are at another level with your reflections. — James Hillman

I'm cautious about a lot of words. — James Hillman

The circumstances, including my body and my parents, whom I may curse, are my soul's own choice and I do not understand this because I have forgotten. — James Hillman

My goal is to create a therapy of ideas, to try to bring in new ideas so that we can see the same old problems differently. — James Hillman

I know my own deficiencies, one of which is that I had lived away from America for such a long time. It's called expatriate. — James Hillman

In the cosmology behind psychology, there is no reason for anyone to be here or to do anything... I'am an accident - a result - and therefore a victim... if I'm only a result of past causes, then I'm a victim of those past causes.... or, if you look at it from the sociological perspective, I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result . — James Hillman

You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. It's the same thing with psychotherapy. — James Hillman

It's the only way we can get out of being so human-centered: to remain attached to something other than humans. — James Hillman

The whole culture is under terrible pressure and fraught with worry. It's hard to get out of that box. That's the dominant situation all over the world. — James Hillman

Any symptom can force you to go deeper into some area. — James Hillman

My war - and I have yet to win a decisive battle - is with the modes of thought that and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism). — James Hillman

Teachers today can't take to a child. — James Hillman

Beauty has never been an important topic in the writings of the major psychologists. In fact, for Jung, aesthetics is a weak, early stage of development. He follows the Germanic view that ethics is more important than aesthetics, and he draws a stark contrast between the two. Freud may have written about literature a bit, but an aesthetic sensitivity is not part of his psychology. — James Hillman

In the past, friendship was a huge thing. But it's hard for us to think of friendship as a calling, because it's not a vocation. — James Hillman

We are driven by the results of the Big Bang, billions of years ago, which eventually produced life, which eventually produced human beings, and so on. But me? I'm an accident - a result - and therefore a victim. — James Hillman

Life Lessons by James Hillman

1. James Hillman's work emphasizes the importance of understanding the psychological and spiritual aspects of life in order to live a meaningful life.
2. He encourages people to explore their inner world and to look beyond the physical realm for answers to life's questions.
3. Hillman encourages us to be mindful of the interconnectedness of all things, and to find beauty and meaning in the everyday moments of life.