Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis and a psychoanalyst. Here we have shared Sigmund Freud quotes about love, life, dreams, self, psychology, child development, friendship, mental health, emotions, inspirational, and motivational.
Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in Příbor, Czechia, and died on September 23, 1939, in Hampstead, London, United Kingdom. His father’s name Jakob Freud and his mother’s name Amalia Nathansohn. His Spouse’s name is Martha Bernays (m. 1886–1939).
Sigmund Freud quotes
Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. – Sigmund Freud
America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success. – Sigmund Freud
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires. – Sigmund Freud
Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me. – Sigmund Freud
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. – Sigmund Freud
The analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient’s ego freedom to decide one way or another. – Sigmund Freud
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. – Sigmund Freud
If you can’t do it, give up! – Sigmund Freud
Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts. – Sigmund Freud
Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief. – Sigmund Freud
A civilization that leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence. – Sigmund Freud
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct. – Sigmund Freud
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. – Sigmund Freud
What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs that have been dammed up to a high degree. – Sigmund Freud
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. – Sigmund Freud
Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine. – Sigmund Freud
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. – Sigmund Freud
The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization. – Sigmund Freud
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection. – Sigmund Freud
Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them. – Sigmund Freud
Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism. – Sigmund Freud
Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another. – Sigmund Freud
Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock. – Sigmund Freud
A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror. – Sigmund Freud
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. – Sigmund Freud
If youth knew; if age could. – Sigmund Freud
The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water. – Sigmund Freud
America is a mistake, a giant mistake. – Sigmund Freud
The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us – of becoming happy – is not attainable: yet we may not – nay, cannot – give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other. – Sigmund Freud
The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man… it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture. – Sigmund Freud
What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages, they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. – Sigmund Freud
A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist. – Sigmund Freud
The first requisite of civilization is that of justice. – Sigmund Freud
Where id was, their ego shall be. – Sigmund Freud
The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. – Sigmund Freud
Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity. – Sigmund Freud
No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere. – Sigmund Freud
The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety. – Sigmund Freud
The instinct of love toward an object demands a mastery to obtain it, and if a person feels they can’t control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it. – Sigmund Freud
The opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity. – Sigmund Freud
Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent. – Sigmund Freud
A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it. – Sigmund Freud
It goes without saying that a civilization that leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence. – Sigmund Freud
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. – Sigmund Freud
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?’ – Sigmund Freud
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. – Sigmund Freud
Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times. – Sigmund Freud
The unconscious of one human being can react upon that of another without passing through the conscious. – Sigmund Freud
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. – Sigmund Freud
The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief. – Sigmund Freud
Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within. – Sigmund Freud
Sadism is all right in its place, but it should be directed to proper ends. – Sigmund Freud
Love in the form of longing and deprivation lowers self-regard. – Sigmund Freud
Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea, they become powerless when they oppose it. – Sigmund Freud
The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. – Sigmund Freud
The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him. – Sigmund Freud
No one who, like me, conjures up the evilest of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed. – Sigmund Freud
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. – Sigmund Freud
No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself. – Sigmund Freud
The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises. – Sigmund Freud
It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it. – Sigmund Freud
A transference neurosis corresponds to a conflict between ego and id, a narcissistic neurosis corresponds to that between ego and super-ego, and psychosis to that between ego and outer world. – Sigmund Freud
Anatomy is destiny. – Sigmund Freud
Conservatism is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast-changing conditions. – Sigmund Freud
When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has. – Sigmund Freud
Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments, and impossible tasks. In order to bear it, we cannot dispense with palliative measures… There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it. – Sigmund Freud
He does not believe that does not live according to his belief. – Sigmund Freud
The psychical, whatever its nature may be, is itself unconscious. – Sigmund Freud
When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature. – Sigmund Freud
One is very crazy when in love. – Sigmund Freud
The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside. – Sigmund Freud
Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways. – Sigmund Freud
One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful. – Sigmund Freud
The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition. – Sigmund Freud
It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life, but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be. – Sigmund Freud
The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life. – Sigmund Freud
The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life. – Sigmund Freud
Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it. – Sigmund Freud
We may insist as often as we like that man’s intellect is powerless in comparison to his instinctual life, and we may be right in this. Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about this weakness. The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it will not rest until it has gained a hearing. Finally, after a countless succession of rebuffs, it succeeds. – Sigmund Freud
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. – Sigmund Freud
Religious doctrines are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them. – Sigmund Freud
Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength. – Sigmund Freud
Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it. – Sigmund Freud
Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake. – Sigmund Freud
In the depths of my heart, I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless. – Sigmund Freud
You wanted to kill your father in order to be your father yourself. Now you are your father, but a dead father. – Sigmund Freud
Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion. – Sigmund Freud
One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man’s judgments of value follow directly his wishes for happiness-that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments. – Sigmund Freud
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? – Sigmund Freud
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis. – Sigmund Freud
In matters of sexuality, we are at present, every one of us, ill or well, nothing but hypocrites. – Sigmund Freud
We are what we are because we have been what we have been, and what is needed for solving the problems of human life and motives is not moral estimates but more knowledge. – Sigmund Freud
Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses of one’s dreams. In what another 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. – Sigmund Freud
That feeling of oneness with the universe which is its ideational content sounds very like a first attempt at the consolations of religion, like another way taken by the ego of denying the dangers it sees threatening it in the external world. – Sigmund Freud
Smoking is indispensable if one has nothing to kiss. – Sigmund Freud
The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor but without folly. – Sigmund Freud
Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to us to be. – Sigmund Freud
I never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me as a member. – Sigmund Freud
Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion’s eleventh commandment is “Thou shalt not question”. – Sigmund Freud
We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts. – Sigmund Freud
Great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working in solitude. – Sigmund Freud
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. – Sigmund Freud
Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanor. – Sigmund Freud
Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home. – Sigmund Freud
The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own. – Sigmund Freud
A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual. – Sigmund Freud
Where id is, there shall ego be. – Sigmund Freud
From error to error, one discovers the entire truth. – Sigmund Freud
He who knows how to wait for the need to make no concessions. – Sigmund Freud
If children could if adults knew. – Sigmund Freud
The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation. – Sigmund Freud
Experience teaches that for most people there is a limit beyond which their constitution cannot comply with the demands of civilization. All who wish to reach a higher standard than their constitution will allow, fall victims to neurosis. It would have been better for them if they could have remained less “perfect”. – Sigmund Freud
There are no mistakes. – Sigmund Freud
Neurosis is no excuse for bad manners. – Sigmund Freud
A love that does not discriminate seems to me to forfeit a part of its own value, by doing an injustice to its object; and secondly, not all men are worthy of love. – Sigmund Freud
How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved. – Sigmund Freud
We are what we are because we have been what we have been. – Sigmund Freud
The madman is a dreamer awake. – Sigmund Freud
Words have magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men’s actions. – Sigmund Freud
Everyone owes nature a death. – Sigmund Freud
The public self is a conditioned construct of the inner psychological self. – Sigmund Freud
A woman should soften but not weaken a man. – Sigmund Freud
My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection. – Sigmund Freud
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