Writing was in its origin, the voice of an absent person.

The communal life of human beings had . . . a two-fold foundation: the compulsion to work, which was created by external necessity, and the power of love.

A strong egoism is a protection.

One... gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion. It is, of course, natural to assume that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature of civilization itself but are determined by the imperfections of the cultural forms which have so far been developed.

Concerning the factors of silence, solitude and darkness, we can only say that they are actually elements in the production of the infantile anxiety from which the majority of human beings have never become quite free.

Civilization runs a greater risk if we maintain our present attitude to religion than if we give it up.

The only shame in masturbation is the shame of not doing it well.