Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or, rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him?
One must not be mean with affections; what is spent of the funds is renewed in the spending itself. Left untouched for too long, they diminish imperceptibly or the lock gets rusty; they are there all right but one cannot make use of them.
An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable requirements for my emotional life; I have always been able to create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely approached that friend and enemy coincided in the same person.
When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly suprised at the weakness of his intellect.
Religion belonged to the infancy of humanity. Now that humanity had come of age, it should be left behind.
Even if all parts of a problem seem to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, one has to remember that the probable need not necessarily be the truth and the truth not always probable.
In the last analysis the entire field of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.
Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever.
At bottom God is nothing more than an exalted father.
Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past.
Words have a magical power. They can either bring the greatest happiness or the deepest despair.
The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.
My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection.
Neurosis is the result of a conflict between the ego and its id, whereas psychosis is the analogous outcome of a similar disturbance in the relation between the ego and the external world.
My psychoanalysis has equipped you with the equivalent of a train ticket to recovery. It is now your decision whether or not you choose to make full use of it.
The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself, and admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious thing in life.
Religion is the process of unconscious wish fulfillment, where, for certain people, if the process did not take place it would put them in self-danger of coming to mental harm, being unable to cope with the idea of a godless, purposeless life.
Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but... a powerful measure of desire for aggression had to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment.
I no longer count as one of my merits that I always tell the truth as much as possible; it has become my metier.
The reproaches against science for not having yet solved the problems of the universe are exaggerated in an unjust and malicious manner; it has truly not had time enough yet for these great achievements. Science is very young – a human activity which developed late.