Sigmund Freud

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

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.

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

Desire presses ever forward unsubdued.

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.

It is not easy to treat feelings scientifically.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Where id was, there ego shall be.

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

I do not in the least underestimate bisexuality. . . I expect it to provide all further enlightenment.

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

I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.

The primitive stages can always be re-established; the primitive mind is, in the fullest meaning of the word, imperishable.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

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.

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.

Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage but it is nothing to be ashamed of no vice no degradation it cannot be classified as an illness.

Being extremely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

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

Intolerance of groups is often, strangely enough, exhibited more strongly against small differences than against fundamental ones.

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

The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.

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

Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego freedom to decide one way or another.

The ego is not master in its own house.

Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses of one's dreams. In what other way can one deal with them? Unless the content of the dream rightly understood is inspired by alien spirits, it is part of my own being.

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.

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

One can love one another properly only when one is close. What is memory compared to what one can behold!

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 in their object relations.

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

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

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?"

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

Our fascination with gold is related to the fantasies of early childhood.

A strong egoism is a protection.

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

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.

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.

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.

The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.

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.

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

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

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

At bottom God is nothing more than an exalted father.

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

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

Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to talking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.

It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime and cruelty too.

Dreams are the royal road to the unconcious.

When making a decision of minor importance I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons.

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.

The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises.

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a fathers protection.

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

Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake.

Love and work... work and love, that's all there is.

The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.

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.

Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.

If youth knew; if age could.

Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to us to be.

No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.

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?

Sadism is all right in its place, but it should be directed to proper ends.

The goal of all life is death.

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.

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

Smoking is indispensable if one has nothing to kiss.

The paranoid is never entirely mistaken.

Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

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

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

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.

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?'

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

In matters of sexuality we are at present, every one of us, ill or well, nothing but hypocrites.

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.

I suppose that romantic love was invented as a brilliant means of seduction.

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?

A piece of creative writing like a day dream is a continuation of and a substitute for what was once the play of childhood.

If you can't do it, give up!

The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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