Quotes By Sigmund Freud

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

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

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

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.

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.

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.

One is very crazy when in love.

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.

What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree.

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

The goal of all life is death.

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

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

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

The ego is not master in its own house.

Where id was, there ego shall be.

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.

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

A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.

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

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 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?

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

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

America is a mistake, a giant mistake.

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