There is scarcely room for doubt that something in the psychological relation of a mother-in-law to a son-in-law breeds hostility between them and makes it hard for them to live together. But the fact that in civilized societies mothers-in-law are such a favourite subject for jokes seems to me to suggest that the emotional relation involved includes sharply contrasted components. I believe, that is, that this relation is in fact an 'ambivalent' one, composed of conflicting affectionate and hostile impulses.

When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly suprised at the weakness of his intellect.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

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

Civilization runs a greater risk if we maintain our present attitude to religion than if we give it up.

The communal life of human beings had . . . a two-fold foundation: the compulsion to work, which was created by external necessity, and the power of love.

A state of consciousness is characteristically very transitory; an idea that is conscious now is no longer so a moment later, although it can become so again under certain conditions that are easily brought about.