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

The Devil would be the best way out as an excuse for God; in that way he would be playing the same part as an agent of economic discharge as the Jew does in the world of the Aryan ideal. But even so, one can hold God responsible for the existence of the Devil just as well as for the existence of the wickedness which the Devil embodies.

Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or, rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him?

It could be ventured to understand obsessive compulsive neurosis as the pathological counterpart of religious development, to define neurosis as an individual religiosity; to define religion as a universal obsessive compulsive neurosis.

We must love or we grow ill.

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.

So in every individual the two trends, one towards personal happiness and the other unity with the rest of humanity, must contend with each other.