The aim of psychoanalysis is to relieve people of their neurotic unhappiness so that they can be normally unhappy.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.

History is just new people making old mistakes.

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.

I regard myself as one of the most dangerous enemies of religion

Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.