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

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

Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.
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 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 think we're miserable partly because we have only one god, and that's economics.
James Hillman

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

I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result.
James Hillman

If you are still being hurt by an event that happened to you at twelve, it is the thought that is hurting you now.
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

Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.
James Hillman

It is impossible to see the angel unless you first have a notion of it.
James Hillman

It's important to ask yourself, How am I useful to others? What do people want from me? That may very well reveal what you are here for.
James Hillman

It's very hard to know what wisdom is.
James Hillman

It's very important for men to look downward, to the next generation.
James Hillman

Just stop for a minute and you'll realize you're happy just being. I think it's the pursuit that screws up happiness. If we drop the pursuit, it's right here.
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

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

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