# Quote — Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

> We always require an outside point to stand on, in order to apply the lever of criticism. This is especially so in psychology, where by the nature of the material we are much more subjectively involved than in any other science. How, for example, can we become conscious of national peculiarities if we have never had the opportunity to regard our own nation from outside? Regarding it from outside means regarding it from the standpoint of another nation. To do so, we must acquire sufficient knowledge of the foreign collective psyche, and in the course of this process of assimilation we encounter all those incompatibilities which constitute the national bias and the national peculiarity. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. I understand England only when I see where I, as a Swiss, do not fit in. I understand Europe, our greatest problem, only when I see where I as a European do not fit into the world. Through my acquaintance with many Americans, and my trips to and in America, I have obtained an enormous amount of insight into the European character; it has always seemed to me that there can be nothing more useful for a European than some time or another to look out at Europe from the top of a skyscraper. When I contemplated for the first time the European spectacle from the Sahara, surrounded by a civilization which has more or less the same relationship to ours as Roman antiquity has to modem times, I became aware of how completely, even in America, I was still caught up and imprisoned in the cultural consciousness of the white man. The desire then grew in me to carry the historical comparisons still farther by descending to a still lower cultural level.
>
> On my next trip to the United States I went with a group of American friends to visit the Indians of New Mexico, the city-building Pueblos...

- Author: [Carl Jung](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-jung.md)
- Book: [Memories, Dreams, Reflections](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-jung/memories-dreams-reflections.md)
- Page: 246
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Jung#Memories,_Dreams,_Reflections_(1963)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-jung/memories-dreams-reflections/we-always-require

## More from this book

> For lack of empirical data I have neither knowledge nor understanding of such forms of being, which are commonly called spiritual. ...Nevertheless, we have good reason to suppose that behind this veil there exists the uncomprehended absolute object which affects and influences us—and to suppose it even, or particularly, in the case of psychic phenomena about which no verifiable statements can be made.

p. 351 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-jung/memories-dreams-reflections/for-lack-of-empirical.md)

> The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. The numinosum is dangerous because it lures men to extremes, so that a modest truth is regarded as the truth and a minor mistake is equated with fatal error.

p. 154 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-jung/memories-dreams-reflections/the-pendulum-of-the.md)

> As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

p. 326 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-jung/memories-dreams-reflections/as-far-as-we-can.md)