Hillman Quotes & Sayings

In the cosmology that's behind psychology, there is no reason for anyone to be here or do anything. — James Hillman

An individual's harmony with his or her 'own deep self' requires not merely a journey to the interior but a harmonizing with the environmental world. — James Hillman

You find your genius by looking in the mirror of your life. Your visible image shows your inner truth, so when you're estimating others, what you see is what you get. It therefore becomes critically important to see generously, or you will get only what you see; to see sharply, so that you discern the mix of traits rather than a generalized lump; and to see deeply into dark shadows, or else you will be deceived. — James Hillman

In the history of the treatment of depression, there was the dunking stool, purging of the bowels of black bile, hoses, attempts to shock the patient. All of these represent hatred or aggression towards what depression represents in the patient. — James Hillman

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

Pathology is not a problem to be solved, but the soul's way of working on itself. — James Hillman

How do you know when the obstacles in your path have been placed by God to protect you, or by Satan to hinder God's purposes in your affairs? — Os 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

Chris Hillman (of the Byrds) recounts ... 'What happened to the Buffulo Springfield at the Whisky was similar to what happened to us at Ciro's ... everybody wanted to be there. It became the place to be ... a great gig.' — Johnny Rogan

We're a group of people whose misunderstanding of each other is only topped by people's misunderstanding of us. — Thea Hillman

My brand is good storytelling. I really want [my company] Hillman Grad Productions to be associated with great stories, interesting characters; things that are three-dimensional and feel honest. — Lena Waithe

We have lost, as James Hillman once put it, the response of the heart to what is presented to the senses. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

While I slept you stood in the
colorful night market
with pyramids of bright
fruit piled high
Where those who loved you,
rushing back to their intimate stalls,
held out pears that had been
dreamed for you
And would the dream pear not
come gladly
once it knew this was you
wanting to take it in?
The dream pear chose reality,
wanting your mouth as I did -
Honestly, it was happy to be bitten. — Brenda Hillman

The kinds of things that poetry can offer are timeless - mainly the kind of compression it offers of powerful language, powerful feelings and images, and, you know, the inner experience becoming outer. — Brenda Hillman

It's different now but I enjoy it more than I did then. I think I appreciate it more now and I love playing acoustically. This is the way I started. Herb and I met each other forty years ago when we were both eighteen years old, playing bluegrass, and that's what drew me into music, and I enjoyed every particular part of my career. But now I enjoy it because it's the twilight of my career, where I can play what I want and I can play when I want and where I want. And that's the greatest part it all. So it's sort of a right that I've earned. I can record records the way I want to. — Chris Hillman

Now is as good a time as any to send up a prayer. — Elsie Hillman-Gordon

We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently. — James Hillman

I found you in the whispers of the shadow ... luring me out into the light. Swallowed by the song and richness of the breath dancing in depth and perception wide. Heart within your eyes, soul in your word, I found home upon the essence of you. — Jennifer Hillman

L.P. So your work must fight religion?
J.H. No, not at all! It fights the unconsciousness, the blindness, that all myth creates about itself. You never can see the actual myth you are in or only through a glass darkly. — James Hillman

Our lives are determined less by our childhood than by the traumatic way we have learned to remember our childhoods. — 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

Well, if I'm only a result of past causes, then I'm a victim of those past causes. There is no deeper meaning behind things that gives me a reason to be here. — James Hillman

One strand of psychotherapy is certainly to help relieve suffering, which is a genuine medical concern. If someone is bleeding, you want to stop the bleeding. Another medical aspect is the treatment of chronic complaints that are disabling in some way. And many of our troubles are chronic. Life is chronic. So there is a reasonable, sensible, medical side to psychotherapy. — James Hillman

We need to have an educational system that's able to embrace all sorts of minds, and where a student doesn't have to fit into a certain mold of learning. — James Hillman

I was on the plane with Dwayne You can call me Whitley, I go to Hillman — Nicki Minaj

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

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

To see the angel in the malady requires an eye for the invisible, a certain blinding of one eye and an opening of the other to elsewhere. — James Hillman

Each of us needs an adequate biography: How do I put together into a coherent image the pieces of my life? How do I find the basic plot of my story? — James Hillman

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

Tell me what you yearn for and I shall tell you who you are. We are what we reach for, the idealized image that drives our wandering. — James Hillman

The willful amnesia afflicting the sciences in general contrasts sharply with the importance given to memory by the humanities. Literature, philosophy, politics, and the visual arts, including photography and filmmaking, feed on memory. Practitioners of the humanities need memory to deepen and refine their thinking. — James Hillman

How can we know ourselves by ourselves? ... Soul needs intimate connection, not only to individuate, but simply to live. For this we need relationships of the profoundest kind through which we can realize ourselves, where self-revelation is possible, where interest in and love for soul is paramount. — James Hillman

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

I am not caused by my history-my parents, my childhood and development. These are mirrors in which I may catch glimpses of my image. — James Hillman

Art, for example, becomes "art therapy." When patients make music, it becomes "music therapy." When the arts are used for "therapy" in this way, they are degraded to a secondary position. — James Hillman

Words, like angels, are powers which have invisible power over us ... — James Hillman

Ecology movements, futurism, feminism, urbanism, protest and disarmament, personal individuation cannot alone save the world from the catastrophe inherent in our very idea of the world. They require a cosmological vision that saves the phenomenon 'world' itself, a move in soul that goes beyond measures of expediency to the archetypal source of our world's continuing peril: the fateful neglect, the repression, of the anima mundi. — James Hillman

God often uses failure to make us useful. When Jesus called the disciples, He did not go out and find the most qualified and successful people. He found the most willing, and He found them in the workplace. He found a fisherman, a tax collector, and a farmer. The Hebrews knew that failure was a part of maturing in God. The Greeks used failure as a reason for disqualification. Sadly, in the Church, we often treat one another in this way. This is not God's way. We need to understand that failing does not make us failures. It makes us experienced. It makes us more prepared to be useful in God's Kingdom -- if we have learned from it. And that is the most important ingredient for what God wants in His children. — Os Hillman

My war - and I have yet to win a decisive battle - is with the modes of thought and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism). — James Hillman

The gift of an image is that it provides a place to watch your soul. — James Hillman

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

It does wonders for my own psyche to turn envy into inspiration. No matter how successful we become, we're never above that. — Hillman Curtis

Our dreams recover what the world forgets. — James Hillman

Vessels expose the invisible Zeitgeist, the visible formed by the invisible. — James Hillman

Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path ... this is what I must do, this is what I've got to have. This is who I am. — James Hillman

Perhaps Eurydice wants to remain marginal, a shade insubstantial ... the mute waste in a limbo without light and without depth are a style of anima fascinations in which the absence of significance is the significance. — James Hillman

Psychology is ultimately mythology, the study of the stories of the soul. — James Hillman

Psychology, so dedicated to awakening human consciousness, needs to wake itself up to one of the most ancient human truths: we cannot be studied or cured apart from the planet. — James Hillman

We approach people the same way we approach our cars. We take the poor kid to a doctor and ask, What's wrong with him, how much will it cost, and when can I pick him up? — James Hillman

When I was playing bluegrass, I was living down in West Hollywood - starving. — Chris Hillman

People used to trust their doctor. They went to an expert. Now people have new ideas and are thinking for themselves. That's a very important change in our collective psychology. — James Hillman

Yes, there's genetics. Yes, there are chromosomes. Yes, there's biology. Yes, there are environment, sociology, parenting, economics, class, and all of that. But there is something else, as well. — James Hillman

We are driven by the results of the Big Bang, billions of years ago, which eventually produced life, which eventually produced human beings, and so on. But me? I'm an accident - a result - and therefore a victim. — James Hillman

Those Laurel Canyon days were great. I have a real fondness for that era, 'til about '68. Musically, it was wonderful, and there was this great innocence, an idyllic view of the world. After that, everything got a little ... edgy. — Chris Hillman

My suggestion is that there's no way out of the human condition. Sex, death, marriage, children, parents, illness. There's no way out. They're a misery, all of them. — James Hillman

Anything you attend to carefully can bring blessing ... — James Hillman

Fear is a huge thing for older people. — James Hillman

Aptitude can show calling, but it isn't the only indicator. Ineptitude or dysfunction may reveal calling more than talent, curiously enough. — James Hillman

God doesn't keep us from trouble; He keeps us through it. — Pam Hillman

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

Don't we all seek Guarida, safe haven? — Richard S. Hillman

The easy path of aging is to become a thick-skinned, unbudging curmudgeon, a battle-ax. To grow soft and sweet is the harder way. — James Hillman

'Mediocre' tends to mean 'undistinguished', while snobs enjoy their distinguishing hallmarks of style - how they wear clothes, use words, where they go and gather and gossip ... Whatever the circumstances the genius has put you into, the fact of individuality defends the soul against all class-action claims. No soul is mediocre, whatever your personal taste for conventionality, whatever your personal record of middling achievements. — James Hillman

A huge meringue with polio who drives everywhere in a beautifully restored Hillman Imp. — St John Morris

From my perspective as a depth psychologist, I see that those who have a connection with story are in better shape and have better prognosis than those to whom story must be introduced. — James Hillman

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

So often when God places a call on one of His children, the ability to answer the call requires a separation between the old life and the new life. We are called away from the old in order to prepare our heart for what is to come. This can be a painful and difficult separation. Joseph was separated from his family. Jacob was sent to live with his uncle Laban. Moses was sent to the desert. Perhaps God has placed you in your own desert period. Perhaps you cannot make sense of the situation in which you find yourself. If you, like Paul, will get intimate with God during this time, He will reveal the purposes He has for you. The key is pressing into Him. Seek Him with a whole heart, and He will be found. — Os Hillman

If you were hurt at a younger age, its the thought that is killing you now — John Hillman

Sin makes our armor vulnerable to attack from Satan, who then gains permission from God to attack us in the area where we have failed to uphold righteousness. If we break down in moral purity, Satan comes in and establishes a stronghold. If we give place to bitterness and unwillingness to forgive, we break fellowship with God and others. If we become money-focused, we fall into greed and deception. Sin is a vicious cycle that leaves us weak and vulnerable to ever more sin. — Os Hillman

Aging is no accident. It is necessary to the human
condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose: the fulfillment and confirmation of one's character. — James Hillman

It seems, as one becomes older, / That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence," wrote T. S. Eliot. Four Quartets, which meditates on time, age, and memory, goes on to say, "We had the experience but missed the meaning, / And approach to the meaning restores the experience / In a different form, beyond any meaning. — James Hillman

"Go and Say Goodbye" by the Buffalo Springfield stands as one of the first examples of what would later be branded country rock — Chris Hillman

I'm not critical of the people who do psychotherapy. The therapists in the trenches have to face an awful lot of the social, political, and economic failures of capitalism. They have to take care of all the rejects and failures. They are sincere and work hard with very little credit, and the HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are trying to wipe them out. So certainly I am not attacking them. I am attacking the theories of psychotherapy. — James Hillman

I can't read all the books I want to read, I can't watch all the phenomena that interest me in the world. The work calls me, and sometimes I wonder whether this is an obsession and I should drop it, or it's a necessity I'm obliged to fulfill. — James Hillman

Do you have a situation in which you're having trouble discerning whether God is protecting you or Satan is hindering you? Ask God to show you His way. — Os Hillman

We vote for Perot. We think he's a great, marvelous, honest man. We send money to his campaign, even though he is one of the richest capitalists in our culture. Imagine, sending money to Perot! It's unbelievable, yet it's part of that worship of individuality. — James Hillman

I think Gram did his best work in co-writes. Sometimes when you're working with one other person, it's such a magical thing. You're editing each other and you're trying to create that one spark. — Chris Hillman

The pathologized images have moved the soul in several ways: we are afraid; we feel vulnerable and in danger; our very physical sustance and sanity appear to be menaced; we want to prevent or rectify. Especially this last seizes us. We feel protective, impelled to correct, straighten, repair. For we have confused something sick with something wrong. [ ... ]
affliction reaches us partly through the guilt it brings. Guilt belongs to the experiences of deviation, the the sense of being off, failing, 'missing the mark'. [ ... ]
However the true missing of the mark is taking the guilt literally, where failings becomes faults to be set right. This places the guilt on the shoulders of the ego who 'should not' have failed. Then pathologizing reinforces the ego's style and guilt serves a secondary gain, increasing the ego's sense of importance: ego becomes superego, drivenly busy with repairing wrongs. A guilty ego is no less egocentric than a proud one. — James Hillman

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

Calling can refer not only to ways of doing - meaning work - but also to ways of being. — James Hillman

Teachers today can't take to a child. — James Hillman

The transfiguration of matter occurs through wonder. — James Hillman

I have many influences and poets whose work I love. My personal canon includes Blake, Keats, Dickinson, Baudelaire, Stevens, Duncan and Barbara Guest - and many living poets as well. — Brenda Hillman

Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind. — James Hillman

I'm always trying to figure out what God is and why matter exists and whether it contains spirit or not. — Brenda Hillman

As an adult, I know about life and death. I know that good people can die too soon and bad ones can live too long. I know that life's not fair, and you take the bitter with the sweet and balance it all as best you can. — Elsie Hillman-Gordon

Remember that in the early days of the feminist movement, they refused to have a leader; different women would just stand up and speak. The early feminists were very careful to not put what was spontaneously arising back in the old bottle. — 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

Your life is not predestined, as in Calvinist thought, where everything is written down in the book of life long before your birth and is inescapable. There are choices, accidents, hints and wrong paths, and the ego you, or whatever you call yourself, is a factor in all this. But there is still this other factor that keeps calling. At some moment, people turn, in despair or when they are unable to go any longer on a certain route, and this inner voice says, "Where have you been? I've been waiting for you to turn to me for a long time." — 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

No theory of the universe can be satisfactory which does not adequately account for the phenomena of life, especially in that richest form which finds expression in human personality. — Burnett Hillman Streeter

Labor also wants shorter hours and a say in how work shall be done. — Sidney Hillman

I'm cautious about a lot of words. — James Hillman

Politics is the science of who gets what, when, and why. — Sidney 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

I just read about John Le Carre, the great spy novelist. He had an absolutely miserable childhood. His mother deserted him when he was young. His father was a playboy and a drunk. He was shifted around to many different homes. He knew he was a writer when he was about nine, but he was dyslexic. So here was a person with an absolutely messed-up childhood and a symptom that prevented him from doing what he wanted to do most. Yet that very symptom was part of the calling. It forced him to go deeper. — James Hillman

Anytime you're gonna grow, you're gonna lose something. You're losing what you're hanging onto to keep safe. You're losing habits that you're comfortable with, you're losing familiarity. — James Hillman

We forget that the soul has its own ancestors. — James Hillman

Food is so fundamental, more so than sexuality, aggression, or learning, that it is astounding to realize the neglect of food and eating in depth psychology. — James Hillman