Sigmund Freud the Psychologist, biography, facts and quotes

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

"Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another"

"Anatomy is destiny"

"Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to talking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young"

"Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts"

"Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock"

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

"One is very crazy when in love"

"Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses of one's dreams. In what other way can one deal with them? Unless the content of the dream rightly understood is inspired by alien spirits, it is part of my own being"

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

"He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore"

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

"The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition"

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

"The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?""

"The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture"

"The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind"

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

"Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake"

"Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness"

"The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization"

"The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water"

"The first requisite of civilization is that of justice"

"Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego freedom to decide one way or another"

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

"America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success"

"America is a mistake, a giant mistake"

"A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror"

"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"

"Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism"

"Where id was, there ego shall be"

"What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree"

"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books"

"What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult"

"We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality"

"We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts"

"We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love"

"Time spent with cats is never wasted"

"The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing"

"Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone"

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

"Incidentally, why was it that none of all the pious ever discovered psycho-analysis? Why did it have to wait for a completely godless Jew?"

"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"

"If youth knew; if age could"

"If you can't do it, give up!"

"If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success along with it"

"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"

"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection"

"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 certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist"

Occup.	Psychologist
From	Austria
Born	May 6, 1856 Freiberg, Moravia, Austrian Empire
Died	September 23, 1939 London, England
Cause	Euthanasia due to cancer
Aged	83 years

Sigmund Freud Biography

64 Famous quotes by Sigmund Freud