Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but ... a powerful measure of desire for aggression had to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment.

We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.

We may insist as often as we like that man's intellect is powerless in comparison to his instinctual life, and we may be right in this. Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about this weakness. The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it will not rest until it has gained a hearing. Finally, after a countless succession of rebuffs, it succeeds.

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.

public self is a conditioned construct of the inner psychological self.

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.

What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.