One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.

Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.

I was making frequent use of cocaine at that time ... I had been the first to recommend the use of cocaine, in 1885, and this recommendation had brought serious reproaches down on me.

One... gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion. It is, of course, natural to assume that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature of civilization itself but are determined by the imperfections of the cultural forms which have so far been developed.

Now it is nothing but torture.

Plaque was placed on 6 May 1977 at Bellevue (a house on the slopes of the Wienerwald) where the Freud family spent their summers.