Sigmund Freud Quotes
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Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers. In them the replacement of religious motives for civilized behaviors by other, secular motives, would proceed unobtrusively. . . .
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I should like to raise the question whether the inevitable stunting of the sense of smell as a result of man's turning away from the earth, and the organic repression of the smell-pleasure produced by it, does not largely share in his predisposition to nervous diseases.
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If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death.
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A woman should soften but not weaken a man.
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Writers write for fame, wealth, power and the love of women.
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Our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution. Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other.
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The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.
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The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface. If we wish to find an anatomical analogy for it we can best identify it with the 'cortical homunculus' of the anatomists, which stands on its head in the cortex, sticks up its heels, faces.
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A father's death is the most important event, the more heartbreaking and poignant loss in a man's life.
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Civilized people have exchanged some part of their chances of happiness for a measure of security.
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These [religious ideas] are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of experience or end-results of thinking: they are illusions, fullfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind.
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Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.
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I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.
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I prefer the company of animals more than the company of humans. Certainly, a wild animal is cruel. But to be merciless is the privilege of civilized humans.
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Crystals reveal their hidden structures only when broken.
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The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult's reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge - a reaction which is precisely the formation of religion.
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Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.
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When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.
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One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
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If you want your wife to listen to you, then talk to another woman; she will be all ears.
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A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.
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Opposition is not necessarily enmity.
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It is unavoidable that if we learn more about a great man's life, we shall also hear of occasions on which he has done no better than we, and has in fact come nearer to us as a human being.
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Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures... There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it.