Sigmund Freud: Trending quotes (page 2)

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“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

Source: Sexuality and the Psychology of Love

Life , Behavior

“The time comes when each 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 book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Life , Men , Pain , Youth

“The idea of a God was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshiped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind.”

Sigmund Freud

Summary of Freud's view found in Karen Armstrong's 'A History of God' (1993), p. 409
Misattributed

Life , God , Lie , Age

“It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Man kann sich des Eindrucks nicht erwehren, daß die Menschen gemeinhin mit falschen Maßstäben messen, Macht, Erfolg und Reichtum für sich anstreben und bei anderen bewundern, die wahren Werte des Lebens aber unterschätzen.
Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 1, as translated by James Strachey, p.25

Life , People , Success , Falseness

“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 book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Love , Men , Parting

“How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.”

Sigmund Freud

Letter to his fiancée Martha Bernays (27 June 1882); published in Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939 (1961), 10-12
1880s

Love

“Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state — admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological — in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away.”

Sigmund Freud

Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 1, as translated by Joan Riviere (1961)
Context: Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state — admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological — in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that "I" and "you" are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.

Love

“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
Love , Feeling , Personality

“Whoever loves become humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.”

Sigmund Freud

Wer verliebt ist, ist demütig. Wer liebt, hat sozusagen ein Stück seines Narzißmus eingebüßt.
"Gesammelte Schriften, Volume 6" (1924), p. 183
1920s

Love , Parting
Sigmund Freud quote: “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”

Sigmund Freud

Letter to Wilhelm Fliess (15 October 1897), as quoted in Origins of Psychoanalysis
1890s

Exercises

“Where does a thought go when it's forgotten?”

Sigmund Freud

“We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love.”

Sigmund Freud

Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 2; as translated by James Strachey, p.63

Love , Suffering

“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

Source: Reflections on War and Death

Pain , Pleasure , Reality

“Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.”

Sigmund Freud book Totem and Taboo

Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics (1913)
1910s

“Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.”

Sigmund Freud

As quoted in In factor of the sensitive man, and other essays (1976 edition) by Anais Nin, p.14
Attributed from posthumous publications

“Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.”

Sigmund Freud book The Future of an Illusion

Source: 1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Ch. 7

Religion , Support , Time

“Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 2, as translated by James Strachey, p.62

Beauty