“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”
— Sigmund Freud
“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
“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
“What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.”
— Sigmund Freud
“Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.”
— Sigmund Freud
“How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.”
— Sigmund Freud
“Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.”
— Sigmund Freud
“Religious ideas have sprung from the same need as all the other achievements of culture: from the necessity for defending itself against the crushing supremacy of nature.”
— Sigmund Freud
“If the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience that bears witness to the truth, what is one to make of the many people who do not have that experience?”
— Sigmund Freud