Quotes By Sigmund Freud

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The goal of all life is death.

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

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

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

The ego is not master in its own house.

Where id was, there ego shall be.

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

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.

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.

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

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.

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

The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?"

Incidentally, why was it that none of all the pious ever discovered psycho-analysis? Why did it have to wait for a completely godless Jew?

America is a mistake, a giant mistake.

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.

We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts.

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.