The first requisite of civilization, therefore, is that of justice — that is, the assurance that a law once made will not be broken in favour of an individual. This implies nothing as to the ethical value of such a law.

To endure life remains, when all is said, the first duty of all living being Illusion can have no value if it makes this more difficult for us.

The true believer is in a high degree protected against the danger of certain neurotic afflictions; by accepting the universal neurosis he is spared the task of forming a personal neurosis.

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.

The primitive stages can always be re-established; the primitive mind is, in the fullest meaning of the word, imperishable.

In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.

Religion restricts the play of choice and adaptation, since it imposes equally on everyone its own path to the acquisition of happiness and protection from suffering. Its technique consists in depressing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world in a delusional manner - which presupposes an intimidation of the intelligence. At this price, by forcibly fixing them in a state of psychical infantilism and by drawing them into a mass-delusion, religion succeeds in sparing many people an individual neurosis. But hardly anything more.