Sigmund Freud Quotes: 147 Quotes About Human Psychology and Mind Mysteries

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

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Pleasure

“In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.”

Sigmund Freud

Source: On Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia"

World

“Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.”

Sigmund Freud

Source: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

“The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

Source: The Interpretation of Dreams

Dreams , Soul , Nature

“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

“It goes without saying that a civilization which 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 book The Future of an Illusion

Es braucht nicht gesagt zu werden, daß eine Kultur, welche eine so große Zahl von Teilnehmern unbefriedigt läßt und zur Auflehnung treibt, weder Aussicht hat, sich dauernd zu erhalten, noch es verdient.
Source: 1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927)

“What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

Source: The Interpretation of Dreams

Dreams

“Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.”

Sigmund Freud

Men , Hostility

“Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

Source: The Interpretation of Dreams

Change

“Anatomy is destiny”

Sigmund Freud

Die Anatomie ist das Schicksal
"The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex" (1924) ( original text in German http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/kleine-schriften-ii-7122/30)
1920s
Variant: Anatomy is destiny

“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. [p.111]”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Support , Happiness

“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 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

Source: Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

Love , Religion

“From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.”

Sigmund Freud

Truth , Error

“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

General Psychological Theory: Papers on Metapsychology https://books.google.com/books?id=T3F2XT_LxNwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=isbn:1416573593&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAvLT854_XAhVHKGMKHefOBU4Q6AEIJjAA Touchstone, (1963); Ch.1, "Formulation Regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning", (1911)
1910s

Life

“The unconscious is the larger circle which includes within itself the smaller circle of the conscious; everything conscious has its preliminary step in the unconscious, whereas the unconscious may stop with this step and still claim full value as a psychic activity. Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs.”

Sigmund Freud book Dream Psychology

Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis For Beginners (1920) as translated by M. D. Eder
1920s

World , Nature , Reality

“I don't rack my brains much over the subject of good and evil, but, on average, I haven't discovered much 'good' in men. Based on what I know of them, they are for the most part nothing but scoundrels.”

Sigmund Freud

Correspondance avec le pasteur Pfister, 1909-1939, Gallimard, 1991, p.103; as quoted in Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World by Matthieu Ricard
Attributed from posthumous publications

Men , Evil , Parting

“When the wayfarer whistles in the dark, he may be disavowing his timidity, but he does not see any more clearly for doing so.”

Sigmund Freud

The Problem of Anxiety (1925)
1920s

“But man's helplessness remains and along with it his longing for his father, and the gods. The gods retain their threefold task: they must exorcise the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them.”

Sigmund Freud

1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927)

Life , Death , Men , God

“Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate in their object-relations.”

Sigmund Freud

As quoted by Anna Freud in the preface to the (1981) edition of Topsy: The Story of a Golden-Haired Chow by Princess Marie Bonaparte.
Attributed from posthumous publications

Love , Hate , People , Dogs

“Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.”

Sigmund Freud book The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud

Analysis Terminable and Interminable, sect. 5 (1937); reprinted in Complete Works, Standard Edition, vol. 23 (ed. James Strachey and Anna Freud. 1964); as quoted in The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations by Robert Andrews, Penguin Books, 2001.
1930s

Parting , Personality

“I do not in the least underestimate bisexuality... I expect it to provide all further enlightenment.”

Sigmund Freud

Letter to Wilhelm Fliess (25 March 1898)
1890s

“Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action.”

Sigmund Freud

Anxiety and Instinctual Life (Lecture 32)
1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

Thinking

“Cruel though it may sound, we must see to it that the patient's suffering, to a degree that is in some way or other effective, does not come to an end prematurely. If, owing to the symptoms having been taken apart and having lost their value, his suffering becomes mitigated, we must re-instate it elsewhere in the form of some appreciable privation; otherwise we run the danger of never achieving any improvements except quite insignificant and transitory ones”

Sigmund Freud

Freud (1919) Lines of Advance in Psycho-Analytic Therapy. cited in: Jürgen Habermas (1972) Knowledge and Human Interests. p. 234
1910s

Way , Suffering

“Time spent with cats is never wasted.”

Sigmund Freud

Frequently attributed to Freud, but there is no evidence Freud ever said it http://www.freud.org.uk/about/faq/.
Misattributed

For Mother , Cats , Time

“A person who feels pleasure in producing pain in someone else in a sexual relationship is also capable of enjoying as pleasure any pain which he may himself derive from sexual relations. A sadist is always at the same time a masochist.”

Sigmund Freud

"Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality" (1905), reprinted in "Essential Papers on Masochism" p.87, edited by Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Hanly, New York University press, New York and London, (1995)
1900s

Pain , Pleasure , Feeling , Time

“In the following pages, I shall demonstrate that there exists a psychological technique by which dreams may be interpreted and that upon the application of this method every dream will show itself to be a senseful psychological structure which may be introduced into an assignable place in the psychic activity of the waking state. I shall furthermore endeavor to explain the processes which give rise to the strangeness and obscurity of the dream, and to discover through them the psychic forces, which operate whether in combination or opposition, to produce the dream. This accomplished by investigation will terminate as it will reach the point where the problem of the dream meets broader problems, the solution of which must be attempted through other material.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

"The Interpretation of Dreams" introduction, 1899; reprinted in "The Interpretation of Dreams the Illustrated Edition", Sterling Press, 2010, page 9
1890s

Dreams , Problem , Sense

“No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.”

Sigmund Freud

Dora : An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905), his analysis of the case of Ida Bauer (also translated as Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria)
1900s

Evil

“Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities.”

Sigmund Freud

A Philosophy of Life (Lecture 35)
1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

World , Religion

“Cruelty and intolerance to those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion.”

Sigmund Freud Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)
1920s

Religion , Nature

“The first requisite of civilization, therefore, is that of justice—that is, the assurance that a law once made will not be broken in favour of an individual.”

Sigmund Freud

Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 3, as translated by James Strachey, p.81

Justice , Law

“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.”

Sigmund Freud

This is not a statement that has been found in any translation of any of Freud's known works. It is a paraphrase of a statement from the essay "Guns, Murders, and the Constitution" (February 1990) http://www.guncite.com/journals/gun_control_katesreal.html by Don B. Kates, Jr. where Kates summarizes his views of passages in Dreams in Folklore (1958) by Freud and David E. Oppenheim, while disputing statements by Emmanuel Tanay in "Neurotic Attachment to Guns" in a 1976 edition of The Fifty Minute Hour: A Collection of True Psychoanalytic Tales (1955) by Robert Mitchell Lindner:
:: Dr. Tanay is perhaps unaware of — in any event, he does not cite — other passages more relevant to his argument. In these other passages Freud associates retarded sexual and emotional development not with gun ownership, but with fear and loathing of weapons. The probative importance that ought to be attached to the views of Freud is, of course, a matter of opinion. The point here is only that those views provide no support for the penis theory of gun ownership.
: After reading of this essay and its citations, this paraphrase of an opinion about Freud's ideas has been attributed to Freud himself, and specifically to his 10th Lecture "Symbolism in Dreams" in General Introduction to Psychoanalysis on some internet forum pages: alt.quotations http://groups.google.com/group/alt.quotations/msg/5fc8dd0f7d56981e, uk.politics.guns http://groups.google.com/group/uk.politics.guns/msg/4ad060e213bc5b6b, talk.politics.guns http://groups.google.com/group/talk.politics.guns/msg/7fbce4b3fa5324a7, can.talk.guns http://groups.google.com/group/can.talk.guns/msg/a57bc07124e64fba , etc.
: One of the statements by Freud which Kates summarized from in Dreams in Folklore (1958), p. 33, reads: "The representation of the penis as a weapon, cutting knife, dagger etc., is familiar to us from the anxiety dreams of abstinent women in particular and also lies at the root of numerous phobias in neurotic people."
Misattributed

Fear

“Moreover, the act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), in a footnote Freud added to the Second Edition in 1909 (see Psychoanalytic Pioneers, p. 46 http://books.google.com/books?id=Fro5MZry5FcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA46#v=onepage&q&f=false.)
1900s

Birth

“The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and it has to do its best to reconcile the claims and demands of all three… The three tyrants are the external world, the superego, and the id.”

Sigmund Freud

The Anatomy of the Mental Personality (Lecture 31)
1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

World , Time

“We read in Rabelais of how the Devil took flight when the woman showed him her vulva.”

Sigmund Freud

The Medusa’s Head (1922, p. 274).
1920s

Reading

“A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success.”

Sigmund Freud

From The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud by Ernest Jones, Vol. I, ch. 1 (1953) p. 5
Eine Kindheitserinnerung aus »Dichtung und Wahrheit«, first published in the journal Imago, vol. 5 issue 2 (1917), p. 57 books. google http://books.google.com/books?id=05FXAAAAMAAJ&q=Eroberergef%C3%BChl = http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29946/29946-h/29946-h.htm
1910s

Life , Feeling , Confidence , Success

“The only bodily organ which is really regarded as inferior is the atrophied penis, a girls clitoris.”

Sigmund Freud

Lecture 31, "The Dissection of the Psychical Personality' (1933).
1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

Girl

“The psychic development of the individual is a short repetition of the course of development of the race.”

Sigmund Freud

Leonardo da Vinci (1916)
1910s

“A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist.”

Sigmund Freud

Fragments of an Analysis with Freud, ch.3 '22 January 1935' (1954) by Joseph Wortis; as quoted in Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations by Robert Andrews, Penguin Books, 2001.
Attributed from posthumous publications

“Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.”

Sigmund Freud

Letter to Carl Jung (1906), as quoted in Freud and Man's Soul (1984) by Bruno Bettelheim
1900s

Love

“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated by James Strachey.
At any rate the interpretation of dreams is the via regia to a knowledge of the unconscious in the psychic life.
Alternate translation by Abraham Arden Brill, p. 483 http://books.google.com/books?id=OSYJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA483#v=onepage&q&f=false. Freud did use the Latin phrase via regia in the original as opposed to translating it into the German of the surrounding text.
"Royal road" or via regia is an allusion to a statement attributed to Euclid.
1900s

Dreams , Knowledge

“The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.”

Sigmund Freud

On his seventieth birthday (1926); as quoted in The Liberal Imagination (1950) by Lionel Trilling
1920s

Study

“The ego represents what we call reason and sanity, in contrast to the id which contains the passions.”

Sigmund Freud

1920s, The Ego and the Id (1923)

Passion

“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.”

Sigmund Freud

Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, Feb. 1, 1900. The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904 (1985).
Ich bin nämlich gar kein Mann der Wissenschaft, kein Beobachter, kein Experimentator, kein Denker. Ich bin nichts als ein Conquistadorentemperament, ein Abenteurer, wenn Du es übersetzt willst, mit der Neugierde, der Kühnheit und der Zähigkeit eines solchen.
1900s

Science

“If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur of religion, one must keep in mind what it undertakes to do for men. It gives them information about the source and origin of the universe, it assures them of protection and final happiness amid the changing vicissitudes of life, and it guides their thoughts and motions by means of precepts which are backed by the whole force of its authority.”

Sigmund Freud

A Philosophy of Life (Lecture 35)
1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

Life , Men , Religion , Universe

“It is easy to see that the ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world.”

Sigmund Freud

1920s, The Ego and the Id (1923)

World , Parting

“I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.”

Sigmund Freud book Studies on Hysteria

Studies on Hysteria (1895), (co-written with Josef Breuer) as translated by Nicola Luckhurst (2004)
1890s

Fate , Suffering

“We obtain our concept of the unconscious, therefore, from the theory of repression … We see, however that we have two kinds of unconscious — that which is latent but capable of becoming conscious, and that which is repressed and not capable of becoming conscious in the ordinary way.”

Sigmund Freud

1920s, The Ego and the Id (1923)