Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Quotes

• If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death.

• Religion is an illusion, and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses.

• From error to error one discovers the entire truth.

• The goal of all life is death.

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

• Neurosis seems to be a human privilege.

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

• Innately, children seem to have little true realistic anxiety. They will run along the brink of water, climb on the window sill, play with sharp objects and with fire, in short, do everything that is bound to damage them and to worry those in charge of them, that is wholly the result of education; for they cannot be allowed to make the instructive experiences themselves.

• In the depths of my heart I can't help being convniced that my dear fellow men, with few exceptions, are worthless.

• I have found little that is good about human beings. In my experience most of them, on the whole, are trash.

• I have found little that is good about human beings. In my experience most of them are trash.

• Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

• Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

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

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

• Anatomy is destiny.

• From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.

• The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.

• We are certainly getting ahead; if I am Moses, then you are Joshua and will take possession of the promised land of psychiatry, which I shall only be able to glimpse from afar.

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