Sigmund Freud: Quotes about life

Sigmund Freud was Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis. Explore interesting quotes on life.

Sigmund Freud: 294 quotes82 likes

“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

“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

“The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

1910s Source: Quoting Plato, as translated by Abraham Arden Brill, "The Interpretation of Dreams" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Freud_-_The_interpretation_of_dreams.djvu/511 (1913 edition), p.493

“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

“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

“The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman's belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life.”

Sigmund Freud

p.190 https://books.google.com/books?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=isbn:039300743X&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioupWF54_XAhUN6mMKHQdhBjcQ6AEIJjAA 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)

“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

“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)

“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

“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)

“…three of life's most important areas: work, love, and taking responsibility.”

Sigmund Freud

From The Wolf-man and Sigmund Freud Muriel Gardiner, p. 365 (cf. books.google.com http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Wolf_Man_and_Sigmund_Freud.html?id=TJoC54vuCmwC) Attributed from posthumous publications