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.

An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable requirements for my emotional life; I have always been able to create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely approached that friend and enemy coincided in the same person.

It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it.

A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.

We must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavorable to the realization of complete satisfaction.

It must be pointed out, however, that strictly speaking it is incorrect to talk of the dominance of the pleasure principle over the course of mental processes. If such a dominance existed, the immense majority of our mental processes would have to be accompanied by pleasure or to lead to pleasure, whereas universal experience completely contradicts any such conclusion.