Sigmund Freud Quotes
-
...perhaps the hopes I have confessed to are of an illusory nature, too. But I hold fast to one distinction. Apart from the fact that no penalty is imposed for not sharing them, my illusions are not, like religious ones, incapable of correction.
-
To be completely honest with oneself is the very best effort a human being can make.
-
The pleasure principle long persists, however, as the method of working employed by the sexual instincts, which are so hard to 'educate', and, starting from those instincts, or in the ego itself, it often succeeds in overcoming the reality principle, to the detriment of the organism as a whole.
-
When it happens that a person has to give up a sexual object, there quite often ensues an alteration of his ego which can only be described as a setting up of the object inside the ego, as it occurs in melancholia; the exact nature of this substitution is as yet unknown to us.
-
In human beings pure masculinity or femininity is not to be found either in a psychological or biological sense.
-
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.
-
It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be.
-
The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.
-
The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization, though then, it is true, it had for the most part no value, since the individual was scarcely in a position to defend it. The development of civilization imposes restrictions on it, and justice demands that no one shall escape those restrictions.
-
If you want your wife to listen to you, then talk to another woman; she will be all ears.
-
Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.
-
To be sure, the ancient belief that the dream reveals the future is not entirely devoid of truth. By representing to us a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future; but this future, taken by the dreamer as present, has been formed into the likeness of that past by the indestructible wish.
-
It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too...
-
Love in the form of longing and deprivation lowers the self regard.
-
Love is a state of temporary psychosis.
-
The ego is not master in its own house.
-
Our fascination with gold is related to the fantasies of early childhood.
-
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.
-
A piece of creative writing, like a day-dream, is a continuation of, and a substitute for, what was once the play of childhood.
-
By abolishing private property one deprives the human love of aggression.
-
Loneliness and darkness have just robbed me of my valuables.
-
I no longer count as one of my merits that I always tell the truth as much as possible; it has become my metier.
-
I became aware of my destiny: to belong to the critical minority as opposed to the unquestioning majority.
-
The reproaches against science for not having yet solved the problems of the universe are exaggerated in an unjust and malicious manner; it has truly not had time enough yet for these great achievements. Science is very young--a human activity which developed late.