Only a rebuke that 'has something in it' will sting, will have the power to stir our feelings, not the other sort, as we know.

Adolescent stage in the development of the human race from which humanity should free itself.

What decides the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle. This principle dominates the operation of the mental apparatus from the start. There can be no doubt about its efficacy, and yet its programme is at loggerheads with the whole world, with the macrocosm as much as with the microcosm.

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be 'happy' is not included in the plan of Creation.' . . . We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things.

The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.

When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly suprised at the weakness of his intellect.

I do not think our successes can compete with those of Lourdes. There are so many more people who believe in the miracles of the Blessed Virgin than in the existence of the unconscious.