It must be pointed out, however, that strictly speaking it is incorrect to talk of the dominance of the pleasure principle over the course of mental processes. If such a dominance existed, the immense majority of our mental processes would have to be accompanied by pleasure or to lead to pleasure, whereas universal experience completely contradicts any such conclusion.

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

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

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

Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is "Thou shalt not question."

The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us - of becoming happy - is not attainable: yet we may not - nay, cannot - give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other.

Demons do not exist any more than gods do, being only the products of the psychic activity of man.