Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.

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

Mans most disagreeable habits and idiosyncrasies, his deceit, his cowardice, his lack of reverence, are engendered by his incomplete adjustment to a complicated civilisation. It is the result of the conflict between our instincts and our culture.

America is a mistake, a giant mistake.

The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction ... One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man's judgements of value follow directly from his wihes for happiness-that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments.

Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses of one's dreams. In what other way can one deal with them? Unless the content of the dream rightly understood is inspired by alien spirits, it is part of my own being.

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.