The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.

It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness.

There is no doubt that the resistance of the conscious and unconscious ego operates under the sway of the pleasure principle: it seeks to avoid the unpleasure which would be produced by the liberation of the repressed.

The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman's belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life.

The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.

Intolerance of groups is often, strangely enough, exhibited more strongly against small differences than against fundamental ones.

Not to know the past is to be in bondage to it, while to remember, to know, is to be set free.