In this way the ego detaches itself from the external world. It is more correct to say: Originally the ego includes everything, later it detaches from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we are aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive feeling - a feeling which embraced the universe and expressed an inseparable connection of the ego with the external world.

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.

The Irish are the one race for which psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever... because they already live in a dream world.

Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.

A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it.

Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.

The whole thing [religion] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life.