We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts.

Sadism is all right in its place, but it should be directed to proper ends.

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.

Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to us to be.

The view is often defended that sciences should be built up on clear and sharply defined basal concepts. In actual fact no science, not even the most exact, begins with such definitions. The true beginning of scientific activity consists rather in describing phenomena and then in proceeding to group, classify and correlate them.

I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.

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