Daily Inspiration Quote by Sigmund Freud

War doesn’t merely loosen morals, Freud suggests; it grants a kind of moral diplomatic immunity. The sentence is built like an indictment: “permits itself” pins responsibility on the state as an actor with agency, not a faceless machine, and “every such” hammers home the scale of the permission slip. What would “disgrace the individual” becomes, under the flag, policy. The line’s bite is its reversal of the usual alibi that nations behave by different rules. Freud flips it: the rules are the same, and that’s precisely the scandal.

The subtext is classic Freud: civilization is a thin, negotiated truce with our aggressive drives, not a permanent upgrade of human nature. A belligerent state doesn’t transcend the psyche; it industrializes it. The superego that shames an individual for cruelty is outsourced to institutions whose job is to stop feeling shame. Violence becomes rational, even hygienic, once it’s translated into “national interest.” Freud isn’t only condemning brutality; he’s diagnosing how respectable people consent to it when it’s laundered through collective identity.

Context matters. Freud was writing in the shadow of World War I, watching Europe’s self-image as enlightened and progressive collapse into mechanized slaughter. That disillusionment runs beneath the line: modernity didn’t tame the beast; it taught it to wear a uniform and keep records. The intent is less pacifist sermon than psychological warning: if you treat the state as morally exceptional, you create the perfect cover for acts you’d never defend in a neighbor, a spouse, or yourself.