[The child] takes his play very seriously and he expends large amounts of emotion on it. The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real.

It might be said of psychoanalysis that if you give it your little finger it will soon have your whole hand.

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.

I've been a fortunate man in life, nothing has come easily.

Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.

The aim of psychoanalysis is to relieve people of their neurotic unhappiness so that they can be normally unhappy.

We know that the great majority of people have a strong need for authority which it can admire, to which it can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats it.