I have never doubted that religious phenomena are only to be understood on the pattern of the individual neurotic symptoms familiar to us.

The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.

In matters of sexuality we are at present, every one of us, ill or well, nothing but hypocrites.

Once again, only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong in concluding that the idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system.

Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.

The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.

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.