Sigmund Freud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.

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