A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one. Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally shortsighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the world had seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the hands of a single madman. Unfortunately, this realization does not seem to have penetrated very far - and our blindness is extremely dangerous.
(0
Reviews)
C.G. Jung highlights the importance of individual quality over the mere aggregation of numbers. He emphasizes that while society often values large groups and organizations, true significance comes from the individual contributions and character. The quote suggests that millions unified in thought or purpose do not inherently create value and can lead to catastrophic outcomes when manipulated by extremist leaders.
Jung expresses concern about the current mindset that overlooks the dangers of collective thinking without acknowledging individual responsibility. Despite historical lessons about the potential for well-coordinated crowds to perpetrate great harm, society seems to ignore these warnings. This detachment from the significance of individuals poses a serious threat to the collective well-being, illustrating the need for awareness in evaluating both people and groups.
Rate the Quote
Add Comment & Review
User Reviews
Based on 0 reviews
No reviews added yet.
Comments will not be approved to be posted if they are SPAM, abusive, off-topic, use profanity, contain a personal attack, or promote hate of any kind.
More »
Other quotes in The Essential Jung: Selected Writings
More »
Other quotes in collective consciousness
More »
Popular quotes
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they might be related to one another in ways frowned on by the Old Testament.
Sebastian Faulks
Taffy. He thinks about taffy. He thinks it would take his teeth out now, but he would eat it anyhow, if it meant eating it with her.
Mitch Albom
All our human endeavours are like that, she reflected, and it is only because we are too ignorant to realize it, or are too forgetful to remember it, that we have the confidence to build something that is meant to last.
Alexander McCall Smith
The value of money is subjective, depending on age. At the age of one, one multiplies the actual sum by 145,000, making one pound seem like 145,000 pounds to a one-year-old. At seven – Bertie's age – the multiplier is 24, so that five pounds seems like 120 pounds. At the age of twenty four, five pounds is five pounds; at forty five it is divided by 5, so that it seems like one pound and one pound seems like twenty pence. {All figures courtesy of Scottish Government Advice Leaflet: Handling your Money.}
Alexander McCall Smith
In fact, none of us knows how he ever managed to get his LLB in the first place. Maybe they're putting law degrees in cornflakes boxes these days.
Alexander McCall Smith
Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can't explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.
And no matter how far they try to go the other way – to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty – at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When the life comes to an end?
I shrugged.
You see?
He leaned back. He smiled.
When you come to the end, that's where God begins.
Mitch Albom
Small towns are like metronomes; with the slightest flick, the beat changes.
Mitch Albom
You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
Mitch Albom
we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality-and, in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization.
Mitch Albom
But an ink brush, she thinks, is a skeleton key for a prisoner's mind.
David Mitchell