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.

We know that the great majority of people have a strong need for authority which it can admire, to which it can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats it.

I am not aware, however, that patients suffering from traumatic neurosis are much occupied in their waking lives with memories of their accident. Perhaps they are more concerned with not thinking of it.

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

Religious illusion must bow to scientific truth. It is in total error about the nature of the true world. Only science is not an illusion.

We may say that hysteria is a caricature of an artistic creation, a compulsion neurosis a caricature of a religion, and a paranoiac delusion a caricature of a philosophic system.

Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.