The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us - of becoming happy - is not attainable: yet we may not - nay, cannot - give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other.

Cruelty and intolerance to those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion.

One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go.

Religion: Something comparable to childhood neurosis

To endure life remains, when all is said, the first duty of all living being Illusion can have no value if it makes this more difficult for us.

Sexuality is the key to the problem of the psychoneuroses and of the neuroses in general. No one who disdains the key will ever be able to unlock the door.

[The child receives impressions like] a photographic exposure that can be developed after any interval of time and transformed into a picture.