Freud Quotes

I deeply admire the genius that was Sigmund Freud. Here are some quotes to digest and think on.
Source: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/sigmund_freud_1.html

Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.

If you can't do it, give up!

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.

Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief.

I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.

Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to us to be.

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.

Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.

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

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

The goal of all life is death.

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.

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.

A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent

He does not believe that does not live according to his belief .


Sigmund Freud