 What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree. |
| 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. |
| Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires. |
| The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. |
| Sadism is all right in its place, but it should be directed to proper ends. |
| Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. |
| Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses of one's dreams. In what other way can one deal with them? Unless the content of the dream rightly understood is inspired by alien spirits, it is part of my own being. |
| Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another. |
| The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization. |
| Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness. |
| What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. |
| Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity. |
| The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water. |
| Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. |
| Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock. |
| Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me. |
| Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. |
| A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual. |
| 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. |
| 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? |
