Psychiatry is the art of teaching people how to stand on their own feet while reclining on couches.

We should picture the instrument that carries our mental functioning as resembling a compound microscope or photographic apparatus.

We may insist as often as we like that man's intellect is powerless in comparison to his instinctual life, and we may be right in this. Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about this weakness. The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it will not rest until it has gained a hearing. Finally, after a countless succession of rebuffs, it succeeds.

The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality.

Much of our highly valued cultural heritage has been acquired at the cost of sexuality.

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

I consider it a good rule for letter-writing to leave unmentioned what the recipient already knows, and instead tell him something new.