Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and phylogenetically.

What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

[The child] takes his play very seriously and he expends large amounts of emotion on it. The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real.

In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.

Dreams are the guardians of sleep and not its disturbers.