Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.
The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.
We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.
The psychical, whatever its nature may be, is itself unconscious.
Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.
Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.
Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.
America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.
Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
If youth knew if age could.
Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego freedom to decide one way or another.
Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.
A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.
One is very crazy when in love.
Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.
The goal of all life is death.
Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.