Quotes from Sigmund Freud

History is just new people making old mistakes.

A poor girl may have an illusion that a prince will come and fetch her home. It is possible, some such cases have occurred. That the Messiah will come and found a golden age is much less probable.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

So in every individual the two trends, one towards personal happiness and the other unity with the rest of humanity, must contend with each other.

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

Adolescent stage in the development of the human race from which humanity should free itself.

After all, we did not invent symbolism; it is a universal age-old activity of the human imagination.

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

Desire presses ever forward unsubdued.

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

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

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

Intelligence will be used in the service of the neurosis.

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

Knowledge is the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified observations.

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.

Once again, only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong in concluding that the idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system.

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

In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable.

The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion ever recognizes it as such.

Religion (is) a universal obsessional neurosis.

At bottom God is nothing more than an exalted father.

The effect of the consolations of religion may be compared to that of a narcotic.

Religion [is] the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity