Sigmund Freud Quotes
-
Nature delights in making use of the same forms in the most various biological connections: as it does, for instance, in the appearance of branch-like structures both in coral and in plants, and indeed in some forms of crystal and in certain chemical precipitates.
-
The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.
-
Perception is less of a recording system and more of a protection system against external stimuli.
-
Knowledge is the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified observations.
-
The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own.
-
Against the suffering which may come upon one from human relationships the readiest safeguard is voluntary isolation, keeping oneself aloof from other people. The happiness which can be achieved along this path is, as we see, the happiness of quietness. Against the dreaded external world one can only defend oneself by some kind of turning away from it, if one intends to solve the task by oneself.
-
These patients have turned away from outer reality; it is for this reason that they are more aware than we of inner reality and can reveal to us things which without them would remain impenetrable.
-
The aim of psychoanalysis is to relieve people of their neurotic unhappiness so that they can be normally unhappy.
-
Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief.
-
This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.
-
Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.
-
A lady once expressed herself in society - the very words show that they were uttered with fervour and under the pressure of a great many secret emotions: "Yes, a woman must be pretty if she is to please the men. A man is much better off. As long as he has five straight limbs, he needs no more!"
-
No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community.
-
The communal life of human beings had . . . a two-fold foundation: the compulsion to work, which was created by external necessity, and the power of love.
-
Neurosis is the result of a conflict between the ego and its id, whereas psychosis is the analogous outcome of a similar disturbance in the relation between the ego and the external world.
-
Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.
-
The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman's belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life.
-
If children could, if adults knew.
-
The rest of our enquiry is made easy because this God-Creator is openly called Father. Psycho-analysis concludes that he really is the father, clothed in the grandeur in which he once appeared to the small child.
-
A string of reproaches against other people leads one to suspect the existence of a string of self-reproaches with the same content.
-
A layman will no doubt find it hard to understand how pathological disorders of the body and mind can be eliminated by 'mere' words. He will feel that he is being asked to believe in magic. And he will not be so very wrong, for the words which we use in our everyday speech are nothing other than watered-down magic. But we shall have to follow a roundabout path in order to explain how science sets about restoring to words a part at least of their former magical power.
-
From error to error one discovers the entire truth.
-
Tobacco is the only excuse for Columbus's misadventure in discovering America.
-
In almost every place where we find totems we also find a law against persons of the same totem having sexual relations with one another and consequently against their marrying. This, then, is 'exogamy', an institution related to totemism.