Top 468 Quotes & Sayings by Sigmund Freud - Page 3

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

Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.

The goal of all life is death

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.

How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.

Our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution. Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other.

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

Religion belonged to the infancy of humanity. Now that humanity had come of age, it should be left behind.

Demons do not exist any more than gods do, being only the products of the psychic activity of man.

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

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

Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.

The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.

Love and work, work and love...that's all there is.

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

Not all men are worthy of love.

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

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

Instinct of love toward an object demands a mastery to obtain it, and if a person feels they can't control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it.

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

I've been a fortunate man in life, nothing has come easily.

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

There is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and ... if that procedure is employed, every dream reveals itself as a psychical structure which has a meaning and which can be inserted at an assignable point in the mental activities of waking life.

A strong egoism is a protection.

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

I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador

A woman should soften but not weaken a man.

The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.

In the theory of psycho-analysis we have no hesitation in assuming that the course taken by mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle. We believe, that is to say, that the course of those events is invariably set in motion by an unpleasurable tension, and that it takes a direction such that its final outcome coincides with a lowering of that tension that is, with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure.

In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.

A man's heterosexuality will not put up with any homosexuality, and vice versa.

All giving is asking, and all asking is an asking for love.

Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.

Humor is a means of obtaining pleasure in spite of the distressing effects that interface with it.

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

Intolerance of groups is often, strangely enough, exhibited more strongly against small differences than against fundamental ones.

Indeed, the great Leonardo (da Vinci) remained like a child for the whole of his life in more than one way. It is said that all great men are bound to retain some infantile part. Even as an adult he continued to play, and this was another reason why he often appeared uncanny and incomprehensible to his contemporaries.

The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.

Sexuality is the key to the problem of the psychoneuroses and of the neuroses in general. No one who disdains the key will ever be able to unlock the door.

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.

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

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.

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

The news that reaches your consciousness is incomplete and often not to be relied on.... Turn your eyes inward, look into your own depths, learn first to know yourself!

When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves

The madman is a dreamer awake

A father's death is the most important event, the more heartbreaking and poignant loss in a man's life.

Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but ... a powerful measure of desire for aggression had to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment.

The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.

The psychoanalysis of individual human beings, however, teaches us with quite special insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father, that his personal relation to God depends on his relation to his father in the flesh and oscillates and changes along with that relation, and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.

We find a place for what we lose. Although we know that after such a loss the acute stage of mourning will subside, we also know that we shall remain inconsolable and will never find a substitute. No matter what may fill the gap, even if it be filled completely, it nevertheless remains something else.

If there are quarrels between the parents or if their marriage is unhappy, the ground will be prepared in their children for the severest predisposition to a disturbance of sexual development or to neurotic illness.

Religious ideas have sprung from the same need as all the other achievements of culture: from the necessity for defending itself against the crushing supremacy of nature.

Dreams are constructed from the residue of yesterday.

We must not allow ourselves to be deflected by the feminists who are anxious to force us to regard the two sexes as completely equal in position and worth.

It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement -- that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.

My boy! Smoking is one of the greatest and cheapest enjoyments in life, and if you decide in advance not to smoke, i can only feel sorry for you.

I had the greatest respect for the authorities of my day--until I studied things for myself, and came to my own conclusions.

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.