Sigmund Freud

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.

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

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.

Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.

The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition.

Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief.

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

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

If youth knew; if age could.

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

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

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