Quotes By Sigmund Freud

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

If youth knew; if age could.

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.

A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.

Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.

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.

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

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist.

We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality.

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

He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.

The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us - of becoming happy - is not attainable: yet we may not - nay, cannot - give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other.

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.

If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success along with it.

Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.

He does not believe that does not live according to his belief .

Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief.

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

The goal of all life is death.

Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.

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

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.

The ego is not master in its own house.

Where id was, there ego shall be.

The psychical, whatever its nature may be, is itself unconscious.

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.