Famous Quotes by Sigmund Freud (63 Quotations)

I do not think our successes can compete with those of Lourdes. There are so many more people who believe in the miracles of the Blessed Virgin than in the existence of the unconscious.

Sigmund Freud – [Miracles]

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.

Sigmund Freud – [Humankind]

I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot inquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premisses on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments… but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.

Sigmund Freud – [Communism and Socialism]

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.

Sigmund Freud – [Sons]

It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggression.

Sigmund Freud – [Society]

It might be said of psychoanalysis that if you give it your little finger it will soon have your whole hand.

Sigmund Freud – [Psychiatry]

It would be one of the greatest triumphs of humanity, one of the most tangible liberations from the constraints of nature to which mankind is subject, if we could succeed in raising the responsible act of procreating children to the level of a deliberate and intentional activity and in freeing it from its entanglement with the necessary satisfaction of a natural need.

Sigmund Freud – [Procreation]

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.

Sigmund Freud – [Wisdom]

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.

Sigmund Freud – [Self-discovery]

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

Sigmund Freud – [Love]

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.

Sigmund Freud – [Humankind]

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

Sigmund Freud – [Morality]

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.

Sigmund Freud – [Neurosis]

No one who has seen a baby sinking back satiated from the breast and falling asleep with flushed cheeks and a blissful smile can escape the reflection that this picture persists as a prototype of the expression of sexual satisfaction in later life.

Sigmund Freud – [Babies]

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be ''happy'' is not included in the plan of ''Creation.''

Sigmund Freud – [Happiness]

One is very crazy when in love.

Sigmund Freud – [Love]

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

Sigmund Freud – [Opposition]

Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.

Sigmund Freud – [Religion]

Sexual love is undoubtedly one of the chief things in life, and the union of mental and bodily satisfaction in the enjoyment of love is one of its culminating peaks. Apart from a few queer fanatics, all the world knows this and conducts its life accordingly; science alone is too delicate to admit it.

Sigmund Freud – [Sex]

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

Sigmund Freud – [Birth]