Sigmund Freud Quotes

“The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours”

Sigmund Freud

The savage, such as the Australian, the Bushman, or the inhabitant of Terra del Fuego, is by no means a remorseless murderer; when he returns home as victor from the war path he is not allowed to enter his village or touch his wife until he has expiated his war murders through lengthy and often painful penances. The explanation for this is, of course, related to his superstition; the savage fears the avenging spirit of the slain. But the spirits of the fallen enemy are nothing but the expression of his evil conscience over his blood guilt; behind this superstition there lies concealed a bit of ethical delicacy of feeling which has been lost to us civilized beings.[4] Pious souls, who would like to think us removed from contact with what is evil and mean, will surely not fail to draw satisfactory conclusions in regard to the strength of the ethical impulses which have been implanted in us from these early and forcible murder prohibitions. Unfortunately this argument proves even more for the opposite contention. Such a powerful inhibition can only be directed against an equally strong impulse. What no human being desires to do does not have to be forbidden, it is self-exclusive. The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours. The ethical strivings of mankind, with the strength and significance of which we need not quarrel, are an acquisition of the history of man; they have since become, though unfortunately in very variable quantities, the hereditary possessions of people of today. Let us now leave primitive man and turn to the unconscious in our psyche. Here we depend entirely upon psychoanalytic investigation, the only method which reaches such depths. The question is what is the attitude of our unconscious towards death. In answer we say that it is almost like that of primitive man. In this respect, as well as in many others, the man of prehistoric times lives on, unchanged, in our conscious. Our unconscious therefore does not believe in its own death; it acts as though it were immortal. What we call our unconscious, those deepest layers in our psyche which consist of impulses, recognizes no negative or any form of denial and resolves all contradictions, so that it does not acknowledge its own death, to which we can give only a negative content.

“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

For the individual, too, obedience to moral standards and abstinence from brutal acts of violence are as a rule very disadvantageous, and the state but rarely proves itself capable of indemnifying the individual for the sacrifice it demands of him. Nor is it to be wondered at that the loosening of moral ties between the large human units has had a pronounced effect upon the morality of the individual, for our conscience is not the inexorable judge that teachers of ethics say it is; it has its origin in nothing but "social fear." Wherever the community suspends its reproach the suppression of evil desire also ceases, and men commit acts of cruelty, treachery, deception, and brutality, the very possibility of which would have been considered incompatible with their level of culture. Thus the civilized world-citizen of whom I spoke before may find himself helpless in a world that has grown strange to him when he sees his great fatherland disintegrated, the possessions common to mankind destroyed, and his fellow citizens divided and debased. Nevertheless several things might be said in criticism of his disappointment. Strictly speaking it is not justified, for it consists in the destruction of an illusion. 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. Two things have roused our disappointment in this war: the feeble morality of states in their external relations which have inwardly acted as guardians of moral standards, and the brutal behavior of individuals of the highest culture of whom one would not have believed any such thing possible. Let us begin with the second point and try to sum up the view which we wish to criticise in a single compact statement. Through what process does the individual reach a higher stage of morality? The first answer will probably be: He is really good and noble from birth, in the first place. It is hardly necessary to give this any further consideration. The second answer will follow the suggestion that a process of development is involved here and will probably assume that this development consists in eradicating the evil inclinations of man and substituting good inclinations under the influence of education and cultural environment. In that case we may indeed wonder that evil should appear again so actively in persons who have been educated in this way.

“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

“Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief”

Sigmund Freud

“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.”

Sigmund Freud

“If you cant do it, give up!”

Sigmund Freud

“Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.”

Sigmund Freud

“Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.”

Sigmund Freud

“The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.”

Sigmund Freud

“The tendency of aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture.”

Sigmund Freud

“Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as right in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as brute force.”

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

“Men are strong only so long as they represent a strong idea. They become powerless when they oppose it.”

Sigmund Freud

“A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.”

Sigmund Freud

“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.”

Sigmund Freud

“Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.”

Sigmund Freud

“The psychoanalysis of individual human beings, however, teaches us with quite special insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father, that his personal relation to God depends on his relation to his father in the flesh and oscillates and changes along with that relation, and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.”

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

“The time comes when each one of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will.”

Sigmund Freud

Quotes by Sigmund Freud

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