# Quote — Freud Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents

> 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, certainly a strong one, though certainly not the strongest, but we have not altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property. It reigned almost without limit in primitive times, when property was still very scanty, and it already shows itself in the nursery almost before property has given up its primal, anal form; it forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people (with the single exception, perhaps, of the mother's relations to her male child).

- Author: [Freud Sigmund](https://www.leafyquotes.com/freud-sigmund.md)
- Book: [Civilization and its Discontents](https://www.leafyquotes.com/freud-sigmund/civilization-and-its-discontents.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud#Civilization_and_Its_Discontents_(1929)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/freud-sigmund/civilization-and-its-discontents/i-cannot-inquire

## More from this book

> It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.

p. 25 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/freud-sigmund/civilization-and-its-discontents/it-is-impossible.md)

> The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus. Who, in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?

p. 68 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/freud-sigmund/civilization-and-its-discontents/the-element-of-truth.md)

> The first requisite of civilization, therefore, is that of justice—that is, the assurance that a law once made will not be broken in favour of an individual.

p. 81 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/freud-sigmund/civilization-and-its-discontents/the-first-requisite.md)