Sigmund Freud Quotes
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The facts which have caused us to believe in the dominance of the pleasure principle in mental life also find expression in the hypothesis that the mental apparatus endeavours to keep the quantity of excitation present in it as low as possible or at least to keep it constant.
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It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.
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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.
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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.
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The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.
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A string of reproaches against other people leads one to suspect the existence of a string of self-reproaches with the same content.
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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.
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In the last analysis the entire field of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.
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No one who has seen a baby sinking back satiated from the breast and falling asleep with flushed cheeks and a blissful smile can escape the reflection that this picture persists as a prototype of the expression of sexual satisfaction in later life.
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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!"
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Only the real, rare, true scientific minds can endure doubt, which is attached to all our knowledge.
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Knowledge is the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified observations.
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The aim of psychoanalysis is to relieve people of their neurotic unhappiness so that they can be normally unhappy.
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The madman is a dreamer awake...
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Talk therapy turns hysterical misery to mundane unhappiness.
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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.
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Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief.
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The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.
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Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.
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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.
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Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.
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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.
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From error to error one discovers the entire truth.
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If children could, if adults knew.