Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.
Sigmund FreudOnce again, only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong in concluding that the idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system.
Sigmund FreudWere we fully to understand the reasons for other people's behavior, it would all make sense.
Sigmund FreudHomosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime--and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.
Sigmund FreudThe whole thing [religion] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life.
Sigmund FreudI have an infamously low capacity for visualizing relationships, which made the study of geometry and all subjects derived from it impossible for me.
Sigmund FreudIt sounds not only disagreeable but also paradoxical, yet it must nevertheless be said that anyone who is to be really free and happy in love must have surmounted his respect for women and have come to terms with the idea of incest with his mother or sister.
Sigmund FreudA state of consciousness is characteristically very transitory; an idea that is conscious now is no longer so a moment later, although it can become so again under certain conditions that are easily brought about.
Sigmund FreudI prefer the company of animals more than the company of humans. Certainly, a wild animal is cruel. But to be merciless is the privilege of civilized humans.
Sigmund FreudThe ego represents what we call reason and sanity, in contrast to the id which contains the passions.
Sigmund FreudThe reproaches against science for not having yet solved the problems of the universe are exaggerated in an unjust and malicious manner; it has truly not had time enough yet for these great achievements. Science is very young--a human activity which developed late.
Sigmund FreudHe that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.
Sigmund FreudWhat we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree.
Sigmund FreudWe should picture the instrument that carries our mental functioning as resembling a compound microscope or photographic apparatus.
Sigmund FreudNo one who has seen a baby sinking back satiated from the breast and falling asleep with flushed cheeks and a blissful smile can escape the reflection that this picture persists as a prototype of the expression of sexual satisfaction in later life.
Sigmund FreudDemons do not exist any more than gods do, being only the products of the psychic activity of man.
Sigmund FreudMuch of our highly valued cultural heritage has been acquired at the cost of sexuality.
Sigmund FreudI have found little 'good' about human beings. In my experience, most of them are trash.
Sigmund FreudPsycho-analysis has taught us that a boy's earliest choice of objects for his love is incestuous and that those objects are forbidden ones - his mother and his sister. We have learnt, too, the manner in which, as he grows up, he liberates himself from this incestuous attraction. A neurotic, on the other hand, invariably exhibits some degree of psychical infantilism. He has either failed to get free from the psychosexual conditions that prevailed in his childhood or he has returned to them - two possibilities which may be summed up as developmental inhibition and regression.
Sigmund FreudFree sexual intercourse between young males and respectable girls" was urgently necessary or society was "doomed to fall a victim to incurable neuroses which reduce the enjoyment of life to a minimum, destroy the marriage relation and bring hereditary ruin on the whole coming generation.
Sigmund FreudThere is a powerful force within us, an un-illuminated part of the mind - separate from the conscious mind that is constantly at work molding our thought, feelings, and actions.
Sigmund FreudWhen a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.
Sigmund FreudA father's death is the most important event, the more heartbreaking and poignant loss in a man's life.
Sigmund FreudA collection to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be removed is, in fact, dead!
Sigmund FreudMen have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety.
Sigmund FreudI take up the standpoint that the tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man, and I come back now to the statement that it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture.
Sigmund FreudIllusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead.
Sigmund FreudPoets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.
Sigmund FreudOur unconscious, then, does not believe in its own death; it behaves as if it were immortal. It knows nothing that is negative; in it contradictories coincide. This may be the secret of heroism.
Sigmund FreudThe unconscious - that is to say, the 'repressed' - offers no resistance whatever to the efforts of the treatment. Indeed, it itself has no other endeavour than to break through the pressure weighing down on it and force its way either to consciousness or to a discharge through some real action.
Sigmund FreudReligious illusion must bow to scientific truth. It is in total error about the nature of the true world. Only science is not an illusion.
Sigmund FreudA love that does not discriminate seems to me to forfeit a part of its own value, by doing an injustice to its object; and secondly, not all men are worthy of love.
Sigmund FreudHuman beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within.
Sigmund FreudA religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it.
Sigmund FreudA 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.
Sigmund Freud