The idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system.

The pleasure principle long persists, however, as the method of working employed by the sexual instincts, which are so hard to 'educate', and, starting from those instincts, or in the ego itself, it often succeeds in overcoming the reality principle, to the detriment of the organism as a whole.

Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever.

The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.

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.

The psychic development of the individual is a short repetition of the course of development of the race.

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