Quote

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

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
Answers
Vitality
Effort
Inquiry
Purpose
Efforts
Idea
Conclusion
Death
Passionate
Empties
Ideas
Answer
Predestined
Coming
Robs
Already
Inquire

More quotes by James Hillman

Image
We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently.
James Hillman
Image
I'm cautious about a lot of words
James Hillman
Image
I've found that contemporary psychology enrages me with its simplistic ideas of human life, and also its emptiness.
James Hillman
Image
Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.
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
Image
I don't think anything changes until ideas change.
James Hillman
Image
Psychology is ultimately mythology, the study of the stories of the soul.
James Hillman
Image
The gift of an image is that it provides a place to watch your soul.
James Hillman
Image
Each person enters the world called, like an oak tree, to fulfill their soul’s agenda.
James Hillman
Image
To hope for nothing, to expect nothing, to demand nothing. This is analytical despair.
James Hillman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
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
We are human less by virtue of our ideal goals than by the vice of our inferiority.
James Hillman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Fear is a huge thing for older people.
James Hillman
Image
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