The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface. If we wish to find an anatomical analogy for it we can best identify it with the ‘cortical homunculus’ of the anatomists, which stands on its head in the cortex, sticks up its heels, faces.
Religion originates in the child’s and young mankind’s fears and need for help. It cannot be otherwise.
The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult’s reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge – a reaction which is precisely the formation of religion.
The Devil would be the best way out as an excuse for God; in that way he would be playing the same part as an agent of economic discharge as the Jew does in the world of the Aryan ideal. But even so, one can hold God responsible for the existence of the Devil just as well as for the existence of the wickedness which the Devil embodies.
The wish to be able to fly is to be understood as nothing else than a longing to be capable of sexual performance.
If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death.
We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast.
The news that reaches your consciousness is incomplete and often not to be relied on... Turn your eyes inward, look into your own depths, learn first to know yourself!
The view is often defended that sciences should be built up on clear and sharply defined basal concepts. In actual fact no science, not even the most exact, begins with such definitions. The true beginning of scientific activity consists rather in describing phenomena and then in proceeding to group, classify and correlate them.
Do you not know how uncontrolled and unreliable the average human being is in all that concerns sexual life?
Only a rebuke that ‘has something in it’ will sting, will have the power to stir our feelings, not the other sort, as we know.
The inclination to aggression constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.
What good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?
Crystals reveal their hidden structures only when broken.
Dreams are constructed from the residue of yesterday.
Opposition is not necessarily enmity.
A strong egoism is a protection.
The price of civilization is instinctual renunciation.
To endure life remains, when all is said, the first duty of all living being Illusion can have no value if it makes this more difficult for us.
We don’t choose each other at random. We meet only those who already exist in our subconscious.