The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult's reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge - a reaction which is precisely the formation of religion.

The different religions have never overlooked the part played by the sense of guilt in civilization. What is more, they come forward with a claim...to save mankind from this sense of guilt, which they call sin.

The functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that normally control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus in its relation to the id it is like a man on horse back, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength while the ego uses borrowed forces.

I had thought about cocaine in a kind of day-dream.

The goal of all life is death

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

Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is "Thou shalt not question."