Sigmund Freud Quotes
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What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.
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It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness.
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The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
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One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man's judgments of value follow directly his wishes for happiness-that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments. [p.111]
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In the last analysis the entire field of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.
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In almost every place where we find totems we also find a law against persons of the same totem having sexual relations with one another and consequently against their marrying. This, then, is 'exogamy', an institution related to totemism.
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There is scarcely room for doubt that something in the psychological relation of a mother-in-law to a son-in-law breeds hostility between them and makes it hard for them to live together. But the fact that in civilized societies mothers-in-law are such a favourite subject for jokes seems to me to suggest that the emotional relation involved includes sharply contrasted components. I believe, that is, that this relation is in fact an 'ambivalent' one, composed of conflicting affectionate and hostile impulses.
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Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.
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The true believer is in a high degree protected against the danger of certain neurotic afflictions; by accepting the universal neurosis he is spared the task of forming a personal neurosis.
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It might be said of psychoanalysis that if you give it your little finger it will soon have your whole hand.
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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."
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Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.
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To endure life remains, when all is said, the first duty of all living being Illusion can have no value if it makes this more difficult for us.
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Love and work, work and love...that's all there is.
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Loneliness and darkness have just robbed me of my valuables.
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A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist.
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What psycho-analysis reveals in the transference phenomena of neurotics can also be observed in the lives of some normal people. The impression they give is of being pursued by a malignant fate or possessed by some 'daemonic' power; but psycho-analysis has always taken the view that their fate is for the most part arranged by themselves and determined by early infantile influences.
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My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection.
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The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.
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It sounds not only disagreeable but also paradoxical, yet it must nevertheless be said that anyone who is to be really free and happy in love must have surmounted his respect for women and have come to terms with the idea of incest with his mother or sister.
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The three major mother gods of the Eastern populations seemed to be generating and destroying entities at the same time; both goddesses of life and fertility as well as goddesses of death.
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The voice of the intellect is soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endless rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind.
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Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego freedom to decide one way or another.
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Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.
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Sadism is all right in its place, but it should be directed to proper ends.
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There is little that gives children greater pleasure than when a grown-up lets himself down to their level, renounces his oppressive superiority and plays with them as an equal.
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We choose not randomly each other. We meet only those who already exists in our subconscious.
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Intolerance of groups is often, strangely enough, exhibited more strongly against small differences than against fundamental ones.
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Where they love they do not desire and where they desire they do not love.
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The voice of reason is small, but very persistent.
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