Quote

To hope for nothing, to expect nothing, to demand nothing. This is analytical despair.

James Hillman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Hillman
Age: 85 †
Born: 1926
Born: April 12
Died: 2011
Died: October 27
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Psychologist
Atlantic City
New Jersey
Expect
Demand
Hope
Nothing
Analytical
Despair

More quotes by James Hillman

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Fear is a huge thing for older people.
James Hillman
Image
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
Image
It's better to go into the world half-cocked than not to go into the world at all.
James Hillman
Image
The gift of an image is that it provides a place to watch your soul.
James Hillman
Image
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
Image
It's the only way we can get out of being so human-centered: to remain attached to something other than humans.
James Hillman
Image
Of course, a culture as manically and massively materialistic as ours creates materialistic behavior in its people, especially in those people who've been subjected to nothing but the destruction of imagination that this culture calls education, the destruction of autonomy it calls work, and the destruction of activity it calls entertainment.
James Hillman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Economics is a slave-driver. No one has free time no one has any leisure.
James Hillman
Image
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
Image
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.
James Hillman
Image
The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose by coming to one predestined conclusion, death. Why inquire if you already know the answer?
James Hillman
Image
Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.
James Hillman
Image
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
Image
I don't think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.
James Hillman