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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.

James Hillman

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James Hillman
Age: 85 †
Born: 1926
Born: April 12
Died: 2011
Died: October 27
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Psychologist
Atlantic City
New Jersey
Others
May
Wells
Well
Important
People
Reveal
Useful
Asks

More quotes by James Hillman

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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
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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
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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
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The gift of an image is that it provides a place to watch your soul.
James Hillman
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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
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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
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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
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Each person enters the world called, like an oak tree, to fulfill their soul’s agenda.
James Hillman
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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
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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
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The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite.
James Hillman
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We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently.
James Hillman
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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
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Fear is a huge thing for older people.
James Hillman
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Words, like angels, are powers which have invisible power over us.
James Hillman
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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
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I don't think you can revive traditions on purpose.
James Hillman
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Teachers today can't take to a child.
James Hillman
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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
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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