History is just new people making old mistakes.
Intolerance of groups is often, strangely enough, exhibited more strongly against small differences than against fundamental ones.
You can always make a lot of people love one another so long as there are a smaller number outside the group for them to kick.
I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.
Nature delights in making use of the same forms in the most various biological connections: as it does, for instance, in the appearance of branch-like structures both in coral and in plants, and indeed in some forms of crystal and in certain chemical precipitates.
What decides the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle. This principle dominates the operation of the mental apparatus from the start. There can be no doubt about its efficacy, and yet its programme is at loggerheads with the whole world, with the macrocosm as much as with the microcosm.
The essence of analysis is surprise. When people are themselves surprised by what they say, that’s when they are really making some progress.
The only unnatural sexual behavior is none at all.
Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.
So in every individual the two trends, one towards personal happiness and the other unity with the rest of humanity, must contend with each other.
Our unconscious, then, does not believe in its own death; it behaves as if it were immortal. It knows nothing that is negative; in it contradictories coincide. This may be the secret of heroism.
The most ancient and important taboo prohibitions are the two basic laws of totemism: not to kill the totem animal and to avoid sexual intercourse with members of the totem clan of the opposite sex.
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.
When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves.
My way of working was different years ago. I used to wait until an idea came to me. Now I go half-way to meet it, though I don’t know whether I find it any the quicker.
There is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s aggressive tendencies... Complete suppression of man’s aggressive tendencies is not an issue; what we may try is to direct it into a channel other than that of warfare.
The game replaces sexual enjoyment by pleasure in movement.
No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community.
Civilized people have exchanged some part of their chances of happiness for a measure of security.
It is not so much that man is a herd animal, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief.