Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.

I have an infamously low capacity for visualizing relationships, which made the study of geometry and all subjects derived from it impossible for me.

The pleasure of satisfying a savage instinct, undomesticated by the ego, is uncomparably much more intense than the one of satisfying a tamed instinct. The reason is becoming the enemy that prevents us from a lot of possibilities of pleasure.

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.

[The child] takes his play very seriously and he expends large amounts of emotion on it. The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real.

The price of civilization is instinctual renunciation.

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.