When it happens that a person has to give up a sexual object, there quite often ensues an alteration of his ego which can only be described as a setting up of the object inside the ego, as it occurs in melancholia; the exact nature of this substitution is as yet unknown to us.

The whole thing [religion] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life.

Creativity is an attempt to resolve a conflict generated by unexpressed biological impulses, such that unfulfilled desires are the driving force of the imagination, and they fuel our dreams and daydreams.

The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.

The idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system.

Dreams are constructed from the residue of yesterday.

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.