Maturity is the ability to postpone gratification.

I have never doubted that religious phenomena are only to be understood on the pattern of the individual neurotic symptoms familiar to us.

Religion [is] the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity

When the wayfarer whistles in the dark, he may be disavowing his timidity, but he does not see any the more clearly for doing so.

At bottom God is nothing more than an exalted father.

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

Our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution. Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other.