The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own.

There is an intellectual function in us which demands unity, connection and intelligibility from any material, whether of perception or thought, that comes within its grasp; and if, as a result of special circumstances, it is unable to establish a true connection, it does not hesitate to fabricate a false one.

The price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.

The ego represents what we call reason and sanity, in contrast to the id which contains the passions.

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.

After all, we did not invent symbolism; it is a universal age-old activity of the human imagination.

The assumption that everything past is preserved holds good even in mental life only on condition that the organ of the mind has remained intact and that its tissues have not been damaged by trauma or inflammation. But destructive influences which can be compared to causes of illness like these are never lacking in the history of a city, even if it has had a less chequered past than Rome, and even if, like London, it has hardly ever suffered from the visitations of an enemy.