We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.

The wish to be able to fly is to be understood as nothing else than a longing to be capable of sexual performance.

We know that the great majority of people have a strong need for authority which it can admire, to which it can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats it.

Just as a satisfaction of instinct spells happiness for us, so severe suffering is caused us if the external world lets us starve, if it refuses to sate our needs. One may therefore hope to be freed from a part of one's sufferings by influencing the instinctual impulses.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

This transmissibility of taboo is a reflection of the tendency, on which we have already remarked, for the unconscious instinct in the neurosis to shift constantly along associative paths on to new objects.

We choose not randomly each other. We meet only those who already exists in our subconscious.