What is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes.

The whole life of instinct serves the one end of bringing about death.

The price of civilization is instinctual renunciation.

When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons.

The division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise of psycho-analysis; and it alone makes it possible for psycho-analysis to understand the pathological processes in mental life, which are as common as they are important, and to find a place for them in the framework of science.

Were we fully to understand the reasons for other people's behavior, it would all make sense.

The pleasure principle long persists, however, as the method of working employed by the sexual instincts, which are so hard to 'educate', and, starting from those instincts, or in the ego itself, it often succeeds in overcoming the reality principle, to the detriment of the organism as a whole.