Quotes by Sigmund Freud

That which he projects ahead of him as his ideal, is merely his substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood - the time when he was his own ideal.

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

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.

I am going to the USA to catch sight of a wild porcupine and to give some lectures.

...we cannot fail to recognise the influence which the progressive control over natural forces exerts on the social relationships between men, since men always place their newly won powers at the service of their aggressiveness, and use them against one another.

Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating in us.

Instinct of love toward an object demands a mastery to obtain it, and if a person feels they cant control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it.

You wanted to kill your father in order to be your father yourself. Now you are your father, but a dead father.

A mans heterosexuality will not put up with any homosexuality, and vice versa.

We live in very remarkable times. We find with astonishment that progress has concluded an alliance with barbarism.

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

I may now add that civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind.

I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador — an adventurer, if you want it translated — with all the curiosity, daring, and tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort.

We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.

I had thought about cocaine in a kind of day-dream.

I was making frequent use of cocaine at that time ... I had been the first to recommend the use of cocaine, in 1885, and this recommendation had brought serious reproaches down on me.

…much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental life that has been restored to health, you will be better armed against that unhappiness.

The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside.

Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.

It only too often yields to the temptation to become sycophantic, opportunist and lying, like a politician who sees the truth but wants to keep his place in popular favour.