The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.

We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality.

The gods retain their threefold task: they must exorcize the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them.

It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it.

Taboo restrictions are distinct from religious or moral prohibitions. They are not based upon any divine ordinance, but may be said to impose themselves on their own account. They differ from moral prohibitions in that they fall into no system that declares quite generally that certain abstinences must be observed and gives reasons for that necessity.

The ego is not master in its own house.

No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.