Sigmund Freud Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
...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.
-
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.
-
In human beings pure masculinity or femininity is not to be found either in a psychological or biological sense.
-
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.
-
The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.
-
How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.
-
Love in the form of longing and deprivation lowers the self regard.
-
It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too...
-
You wanted to kill your father in order to be your father yourself. Now you are your father, but a dead father.
-
The ego is not master in its own house.
-
Loneliness and darkness have just robbed me of my valuables.
-
Our fascination with gold is related to the fantasies of early childhood.
-
Love is a state of temporary psychosis.
-
The ego represents what we call reason and sanity, in contrast to the id which contains the passions.
-
By abolishing private property one deprives the human love of aggression.
-
I became aware of my destiny: to belong to the critical minority as opposed to the unquestioning majority.
-
Philosophers stretch the meaning of words until they retain scarcely anything of their original sense. They give the name of "God" to some vague abstraction which they have created for themselves; having done so they can pose before all the world as deists, as believers of God, and they can even boast that they have recognized a higher, purer concept of God, notwithstanding that their God is not nothing more than an insubstantial shadow and no longer the mighty personality of religious doctrines.
-
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.
-
Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime--and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.
-
A piece of creative writing, like a day-dream, is a continuation of, and a substitute for, what was once the play of childhood.