Sigmund Freud Quotes
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It is unreasonable to expect science to produce a system of ethics-ethics are a kind of highway code for traffic among mankind-and the fact that in physics atoms which were yesterday assumed to be square are now assumed to be round is exploited with unjustified tendentiousness by all who are hungry for faith; so long as physics extends our dominion over nature, these changes ought to be a matter of complete indifference to you.
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Were we fully to understand the reasons for other people's behavior, it would all make sense.
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Another technique for fending off suffering is the employment of the displacements of libido which our mental apparatus permits of and through which its function gains so much in flexibility. The task here is that of shifting the instinctual aims in such a way that they cannot come up against frustration from the external world.
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In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed by the deep inner needs of our nature.
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Religious illusion must bow to scientific truth. It is in total error about the nature of the true world. Only science is not an illusion.
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Free sexual intercourse between young males and respectable girls" was urgently necessary or society was "doomed to fall a victim to incurable neuroses which reduce the enjoyment of life to a minimum, destroy the marriage relation and bring hereditary ruin on the whole coming generation.
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We have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to withhold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level.
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A love that does not discriminate seems to me to forfeit a part of its own value, by doing an injustice to its object; and secondly, not all men are worthy of love.
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So in every individual the two trends, one towards personal happiness and the other unity with the rest of humanity, must contend with each other.
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We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.
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Now it is nothing but torture.
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Love can not be much younger than the lust for murder.
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What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
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Civilization runs a greater risk if we maintain our present attitude to religion than if we give it up.
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A child in its greed for love does not enjoy having to share the affection of its parents with its brothers and sisters; and it notices that the whole of their affection is lavished upon it once more whenever it arouses their anxiety by falling ill. It has now discovered a means of enticing out its parents' love and will make use of that means as soon as it has the necessary psychical material at its disposal for producing an illness.
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The most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the assistance of consciousness.
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In every age immorality has found no less support in religion than morality has. If the achievements of religion in respect to man's happiness, susceptibility to culture and moral control are no better than this, the question cannot but arise whether we are not overrating its necessity for mankind, and whether we do wisely in basing our cultural demands upon it.
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Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
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All giving is asking, and all asking is an asking for love.
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"He sido un hombre afortunado en la vida, nada me ha sido facil." "I've been a fortunate man in life, nothing has come easy"
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The wish to be able to fly is to be understood as nothing else than a longing to be capable of sexual performance.
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Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to us to be.
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The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us - of becoming happy - is not attainable: yet we may not - nay, cannot - give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other.
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I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.