Sigmund Freud quotes

Born
6 May 1856 Freiberg in Mähren, Moravia, Austrian Empire.

Died
23 September 1939.

Occupation
Neurologist.

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.

A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist.
– Sigmund Freud

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
– Sigmund Freud

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.
– Sigmund Freud

Love and work… work and love, that’s all there is.
– Sigmund Freud

The ego is not master in its own house.
– Sigmund Freud

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.
– Sigmund Freud

Sadism is all right in its place, but it should be directed to proper ends.
– Sigmund Freud

The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.
– Sigmund Freud

We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts.
– Sigmund Freud

The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.
– Sigmund Freud

America is a mistake, a giant mistake.
– Sigmund Freud

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.
– Sigmund Freud

One is very crazy when in love.
– Sigmund Freud

Where id was, there ego shall be.
– Sigmund Freud

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.
– Sigmund Freud

Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.
– Sigmund Freud

If you can’t do it, give up!
– Sigmund Freud

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.
– Sigmund Freud

I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.
– Sigmund Freud

Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient’s ego freedom to decide one way or another.
– Sigmund Freud

The psychical, whatever its nature may be, is itself unconscious.
– Sigmund Freud

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.
– Sigmund Freud

The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man… it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture.
– Sigmund Freud

We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.
– Sigmund Freud

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.
– Sigmund Freud

Incidentally, why was it that none of all the pious ever discovered psycho-analysis? Why did it have to wait for a completely godless Jew?
– Sigmund Freud

Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.
– Sigmund Freud

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

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
– Sigmund Freud

Time spent with cats is never wasted.
– Sigmund Freud

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.
– Sigmund Freud

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
– Sigmund Freud

Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.
– Sigmund Freud

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.
– Sigmund Freud

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
– Sigmund Freud

If youth knew; if age could.
– Sigmund Freud

Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.
– Sigmund Freud

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

Anatomy is destiny.
– Sigmund Freud

Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake.
– Sigmund Freud

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.
– Sigmund Freud

The goal of all life is death.
– Sigmund Freud

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
– Sigmund Freud