Quotes from book
The Future of an Illusion

Name: The Future of an Illusion
Author: Sigmund Freud

The Future of an Illusion is a 1927 work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which Freud discusses religion's origins, development, and its future. He provides a psychoanalysis of religion, which he views as a false belief system.

“Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is "Thou shalt not question."”

Sigmund Freud book The Future of an Illusion

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

“Religious doctrines … are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them.”

Sigmund Freud book The Future of an Illusion

Source: 1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Ch. 6

“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

“No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.”

Sigmund Freud book The Future of an Illusion

Source: The Future of an Illusion

“In so doing, the idea forces itself upon him that religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis.”

Sigmund Freud book The Future of an Illusion

Source: 1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Ch. 10

“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)

“Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanor.”

Sigmund Freud book The Future of an Illusion

Variant: Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.
Source: 1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Ch. 6