James Hillman Quotes

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James Hillman

Profession : Psychologist

Birth : April 12, 1926

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

We carve out risk-free lives where nothing happens.

James Hillman

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

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. It's the same thing with psychotherapy.

James Hillman

You don't know what you're going to get into when you follow your bliss.

James Hillman

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

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

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

I know my own deficiencies, one of which is that I had lived away from America for such a long time. It's called expatriate.

James Hillman

I'm cautious about a lot of words.

James Hillman

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

We have to give value to authority. We have to give value to office, being in office, holding office.

James Hillman

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

When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.

James Hillman

As Plotinus tells us, we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belongs to its necessity.

James Hillman

The circumstances, including my body and my parents, whom I may curse, are my soul's own choice and I do not understand this because I have forgotten.

James Hillman

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

We need to work on the world so it will not be so oppressive.

James Hillman

All we can do when we think of kids today is think of more hours of school, earlier age at the computer, and curfews. Who would want to grow up in that world?

James Hillman

Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure.

James Hillman