Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures... There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it.

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

The transformation of object-libido into narcissistic libido which thus takes place obviously implies an abandonment of sexual aims, a desexualization - a kind of sublimation, therefore.

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

Humor is a means of obtaining pleasure in spite of the distressing effects that interface with it.

The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.

The psychic development of the individual is a short repetition of the course of development of the race.