773 Quotes by Sigmund Freud

No matter how much restriction civilization imposes on the individual, he nevertheless finds some way to circumvent it. Wit is the best safety valve modern man has evolved; the more civilization, the more repression, the more need there is for wit.“.

There are no mistakes.

Just as a satisfaction of instinct spells happiness for us, so severe suffering is caused us if the external world lets us starve, if it refuses to sate our needs. One may therefore hope to be freed from a part of one’s sufferings by influencing the instinctual impulses.

That others rejected it too, and still do, I find less surprising. ‘For the little children do not like it’ when there is talk of man’s inborn tendency to ‘wickedness’, to aggression and destruction, and therefore to cruelty.

We know less about the sexual life of little girls than of boys. But we need not feel ashamed of this distinction; after all, the sexual life of adult women is a ‘dark continent’ for psychology.

The pleasure principle long persists, however, as the method of working employed by the sexual instincts, which are so hard to ‘educate’, and, starting from those instincts, or in the ego itself, it often succeeds in overcoming the reality principle, to the detriment of the organism as a whole.

The state in which the ideas existed before being made conscious is called by us repression.

When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons.

The news that reaches your consciousness is incomplete and often not to be relied on... Turn your eyes inward, look into your own depths, learn first to know yourself!