“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

Last update Oct. 4, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs…" by Sigmund Freud?
Sigmund Freud photo
Sigmund Freud147
Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psycho… 1856–1939

Related quotes

Max Weber photo

“A true prophecy creates and systematically orients conduct toward one internal measure of value. In the face of this the "world" is viewed as material to be fashioned ethically according to the norm. Confucianism in contrast meant adjustment to the outside, to the conditions of the "world." A well-adjusted man, rationalizing his conduct only to the degree requisite for adjustment, does not constitute a systematic unity but rather a complex of useful and particular traits.”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Source: Religion of China (1915), p. 235

Antisthenes photo

“Antisthenes … used to say that the wise man would regulate his conduct as a citizen, not according to the established laws of the state, but according to the law of virtue.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

Seneca the Younger photo

“I propose to value them according to their character, and not according to their duties. Each man acquires his character for himself, but accident assigns his duties.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLVII: On master and slave

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“Ethical man accords his profession to his beliefs, instead of according his beliefs to his profession.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 66

Richard J. Daley photo

“If a man can't put his arms around his sons and help them, then what's the world coming to?”

Richard J. Daley (1902–1976) American politician

The Man Who Made Chicago Work, 2008-10-12, Staff Reporter, 1977, January, Time Magazine Online http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947807-2,00.html, <br class="br">Response to criticism for steering millions of dollars in city insurance to an agency where his son worked.

Jane Austen photo

“That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Jack Vance photo

“What a strange and unfamiliar world if everyone were treated according to his deserts!”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Suldrun's Garden (1983), Chapter 25, section 1 (p. 270)

“A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.”

Fawn M. Brodie (1915–1981) American historian and biographer

No Man Knows My History, ch. 19 (1945)

Karl Popper photo

“Scientists try to eliminate their false theories, they try to let them die in their stead. The believer—whether animal or man—perishes with his false beliefs.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Source: Epistemology Without A Knowing Subject (1967)

Novalis photo

“Man has ever expressed some symbolical Philosophy of his Being in his Works and Conduct”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Novalis (1829)
Context: Man has ever expressed some symbolical Philosophy of his Being in his Works and Conduct; he announces himself and his Gospel of Nature; he is the Messiah of Nature.

Related topics