Sigmund Freud Quotes

None believes in his own death. In the unconscious everyone is convinced of his own immortality.

This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.

The ego represents what we call reason and sanity, in contrast to the id which contains the passions.

Humanity is in the highest degree irrational, so that there is no prospect of influencing it by reasonable arguments. Against prejudice one can do nothing.

The Irish are the one race for which psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever... because they already live in a dream world.

The aim of psychoanalysis is to relieve people of their neurotic unhappiness so that they can be normally unhappy.

The madman is a dreamer awake

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

Were we fully to understand the reasons for other people's behavior, it would all make sense.

Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.

Not to know the past is to be in bondage to it, while to remember, to know, is to be set free.

I do not think our successes can compete with those of Lourdes. There are so many more people who believe in the miracles of the Blessed Virgin than in the existence of the unconscious.

The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.

I cannot face with comfort the idea of life without work; work and the free play of the imagination are for me the same thing, I take no pleasure in anything else.

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

America is a mistake, a giant mistake.

The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.

The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.

If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death.

Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.

That which we can't remember, we will repeat.

It is not attention that the child is seeking, but love.

Two hallmarks of a healthy life are the abilities to love and to work. Each requires imagination.

Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.

A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.

My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection.

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.

Anxiety in children is originally nothing other than an expression of the fact they are feeling the loss of the person they love.

Once again, only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong in concluding that the idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system.

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.

The true believer is in a high degree protected against the danger of certain neurotic afflictions; by accepting the universal neurosis he is spared the task of forming a personal neurosis.

The goal of all life is death

We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.

Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.

Perception is less of a recording system and more of a protection system against external stimuli.

The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.

Talk therapy turns hysterical misery to mundane unhappiness.

Perhaps the gods are kind to us, by making life more disagreeable as we grow older. In the end death seems less intolerable than the manifold burdens we carry

Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to taking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.

Knowledge is the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified observations.

The paranoid is never entirely mistaken.

I no longer count as one of my merits that I always tell the truth as much as possible; it has become my metier.

One is very crazy when in love.

The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.

When someone abuses me I can defend myself, but against praise I am defenceless.

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead.

Sadism is all right in its place, but it should be directed to proper ends.

Desire presses ever forward unsubdued.

When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons.