The psychical, whatever its nature may be, is itself unconscious.

A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.

The only person with whom you have to compare ourselves, is that you in the past. And the only per-son better you should be, this is who you are now.

Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.

Another technique for fending off suffering is the employment of the displacements of libido which our mental apparatus permits of and through which its function gains so much in flexibility. The task here is that of shifting the instinctual aims in such a way that they cannot come up against frustration from the external world.

The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.

A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.