773 Quotes by Sigmund Freud

The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'

I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot inquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premisses on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.

In every age immorality has found no less support in religion than morality has. If the achievements of religion in respect to man's happiness, susceptibility to culture and moral control are no better than this, the question cannot but arise whether we are not overrating its necessity for mankind, and whether we do wisely in basing our cultural demands upon it.

Once again, only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong in concluding that the idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system.

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

We must love or we grow ill.

One must learn to give up momentary, uncertain and destructive pleasure for delayed, restrained, but dependable pleasure.

One must not be mean with the affections; what is spent of the fund is renewed in the spending itself.