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.

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

I have often felt as though I had inherited all the defiance and all the passions with which our ancestors defended their Temple and could gladly sacrifice my life for one great moment in history. And at the same time I always felt so helpless and incapable of expressing these ardent passions even by a word or a poem.

I take up the standpoint that the tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man, and I come back now to the statement that it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture.

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.

The whole life of instinct serves the one end of bringing about death.

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.