Sigmund freud quotes

The goal of all life is death

A collection to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be removed is, in fact, dead!

I have found little 'good' about human beings. In my experience, most of them are trash.

Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures... There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

I prefer the company of animals more than the company of humans. Certainly, a wild animal is cruel. But to be merciless is the privilege of civilized humans.

When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.

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

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.

The madman is a dreamer awake

Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.

We are what we are because we have been what we have been.

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

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

Cruelty and intolerance to those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion.

In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart.

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

The inclination to aggression constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.

The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence; by asking this question one is merely admitting to a store of unsatisfied libido to which something else must have happened, a kind of fermentation leading to sadness and depression.

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

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.

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.

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

Dreams are constructed from the residue of yesterday.

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

We choose not randomly each other. We meet only those who already exists in our subconscious.

It is not attention that the child is seeking, but love.

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

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

But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

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

Not all men are worthy of love.

The aim of psychoanalysis is to relieve people of their neurotic unhappiness so that they can be normally unhappy.

Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within.

We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.

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

All that matters is love and work.

From error to error one discovers the entire truth.

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.

Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.

Not to know the past is to be in bondage to it, while to remember, to know, is to be set free.

Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.

The only person with whom you have to compare ourselves, is that you in the past. And the only per-son better you should be, this is who you are now.

The paranoid is never entirely mistaken.

Psychiatry is the art of teaching people how to stand on their own feet while reclining on couches.

Knowledge is the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified observations.

We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast.

Maturity is the ability to postpone gratification.

When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.

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

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

The only shame in masturbation is the shame of not doing it well.

Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is "Thou shalt not question."

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

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

Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.

Even if all parts of a problem seem to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, one has to remember that the probable need not necessarily be the truth and the truth not always probable.

Love is a state of temporary psychosis.

All family life is organized around the most damaged person in it.

The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.

There is a powerful force within us, an un-illuminated part of the mind - separate from the conscious mind that is constantly at work molding our thought, feelings, and actions.

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

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

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

Love in the form of longing and deprivation lowers the self regard.

I became aware of my destiny: to belong to the critical minority as opposed to the unquestioning majority.

Without love we fall ill.

The unconscious of one human being can react upon that of another without passing through the conscious.

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.

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.

History is just new people making old mistakes.

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

When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has.

One must learn to give up momentary, uncertain and destructive pleasure for delayed, restrained, but dependable pleasure.

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

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.

There is little that gives children greater pleasure than when a grown-up lets himself down to their level, renounces his oppressive superiority and plays with them as an equal.

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

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

Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.

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.

If you want your wife to listen to you, then talk to another woman; she will be all ears.

Two hallmarks of a healthy life are the abilities to love and to work. Each requires imagination.

Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past.

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?'

Words have a magical power. They can either bring the greatest happiness or the deepest despair.

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

Were we fully to understand the reasons for other people's behavior, it would all make sense.

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

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

The only unnatural sexual behavior is none at all.

Crystals reveal their hidden structures only when broken.

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

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

Where does a thought go when it's forgotten?

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

That which we can't remember, we will repeat.

Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.

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.

Where they love they do not desire and where they desire they do not love.

To be completely honest with oneself is the very best effort a human being can make.

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!

A strong egoism is a protection.

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.

When someone abuses me I can defend myself, but against praise I am defenceless.

Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why this illness was bound to come upon you and perhaps you will thenceforth avoid falling ill.

What good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?

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

A woman should soften but not weaken a man.

The sexual life of adult women is a "dark continent" for psychology.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

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

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

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

If it's not one thing, it's your mother.

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