Freud Sigmund

Quotes

1. Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state — admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological — in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that "I" and "you" are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.

2. 

   Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanor.

3. 

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

   p. 53

4. 

   Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.

   p. 62

5. 

   The true believer is in a high degree protected against the danger of certain neurotic afflictions, by accepting the universal neurosis he is spared the task of forming a personal neurosis.

6. 

   The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which it may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little.

7. 

   If the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience that bears witness to the truth, what is one to make of the many people who do not have that experience?

8. 

   Religious ideas have sprung from the same need as all the other achievements of culture: from the necessity for defending itself against the crushing supremacy of nature.

9. 

   Religious doctrines … are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them.

10. 

    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.

That’s all the quotes.

10 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more