A Quote by Sigmund Freud

These [religious ideas] are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of experience or end-results of thinking: they are illusions, fullfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind.

Sigmund Freud

Quote Topics

End Experience Given Ideas Illusions Mankind Most Oldest Out Religious Results Strongest Teachings Thinking Urgent Wishes

Quote Author

Sigmund Freud
Austrian - Psychologist
May 6, 1856 - September 23, 1939

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown

H. P. Lovecraft

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

H. P. Lovecraft

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.

H. P. Lovecraft

Given the ambiguity of religious texts and teachings, the mixed historical record, and the empirical evidence, it would be foolhardy to assert that religious faith necessarily upholds democratic values.

Kenneth D. Wald

I am a very proud Hindu. The foundation of my personality is laid on the teachings of Swami Vivekananda or Sanatan Dharm or the Geeta. And if my religious practices or anybody's religious practices is given any kind of sadistic name, it instills fear about other person's religious practices.

Kangana Ranaut

Christ wishes to raise men up to heaven, and has given them all the means to attain this; whilst the Devil, who himself for his pride was cast down from heaven into the dominions of the air, wishes by every means to attach men to earthly,- sensual, transitory things, and, in order to attain this end, he employs the most powerful, most prodigious means.

John of Kronstadt

No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has become for him a source of life, meaning, and beauty, and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.

Carl Jung

In some of the classes, especially the introductory religion courses I took, the professors can veer into a particular strain of religious anti-intellectualism. Professors typically aren't given tenure at Liberty, so there's pressure to hew to the party line on religious and social issues. I didn't see a whole lot of my professors encouraging critical thinking among their students. Which isn't to say that students don't engage critical thinking skills at Liberty - just that it wasn't part of my classroom experience there.

Kevin Roose

I am continually amazed by the credence given to religious claims in the intellectual community; and, as a human being, i am appaulled by the psychological damage caused by religious teachings-damage that often takes years to counteract.

George H. Smith

The revealed and mystic literature of mankind bears ample testimony to the fact that religious experience has been too enduring and dominant in the history of mankind to be rejected as mere illusion. There seems to be no reason, then, to accept the normal level of human experience as fact and reject its other levels as mystical and emotional.

Muhammad Iqbal

I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.

Albert Camus

I usually have two or three ideas floating around. When I have free time, the one I end up thinking most about is the one I end up pursuing.

Colson Whitehead

Knowledge and ideas tend to be a bit like experience - nice, but not necessarily useful. Clear thinking, logical priorities and the ability to reason will beat bright ideas and unassisted experience everytime.

Carroll Smith

I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can't handle these so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind.

Howard Thurman

More than any religious figure that I can think of, Dalai Lama goes out of his way to attend interfaith conferences; religious harmony is one of his urgent priorities in life.