Quotes from Sigmund Freud

A woman should soften but not weaken a man.

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 aggressiveness.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.

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

By abolishing private property one deprives the human love of aggression.

In the development of mankind as a whole, just as in individuals, love alone acts as the civilizing factor in the sense that it brings a change from egoism to altruism.

You can always make a lot of people love one another so long as there are a smaller number outside the group for them to kick.

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

A strong egoism is a protection against disease, but in the last resort we must begin to love in order that we may not fall ill, and must fall ill if, in consequence of frustration, we cannot love.

All that matters is love and work.

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.

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

I no longer count as one of my merits that I always tell the truth as much as possible; it has become my metier.

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

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

The tendency of aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man...it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture.

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.

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis

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.

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.

The creation of the mental domain of phantasm has a complete counterpart in the establishment of "reservations" and "nature-parks."... The "reservation" is to maintain the old condition of things which has been regretfully sacrificed to necessity everywhere else; there everything make grow and spread as it pleases, including what is it useless and even what is harmful. The mental realm of phantasm is also such a reservation reclaimed from the encroachment of the reality-principle.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.

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

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