773 Quotes by Sigmund Freud

Religion originates in the child’s and young mankind’s fears and need for help. It cannot be otherwise.

The madman is a dreamer awake.

I was convinced, I added, that she would be better at once if her father said that he was sacrificing Frau K. to her health. I hoped that he would not be persuaded to do so, because then she would have seen what a strong weapon she had in her hands, and would certainly not shrink from exploiting all the possibilities of illness on every future occasion. However, if her father did not give in to her, I felt sure that she would not abandon her invalid status so easily.

Words call forth effects and are the universal means of influencing human beings.

It is the relation of similarity, congruence, or convergence, the just like, which dreams have the most various means of expressing better than anything else.

At first this gives the impression that the psychical intensity7 of the particular ideas was not taken into consideration at all in their selection for the dream, but only the varying nature and degree of their determination.

The day thought, which was no wish in itself but rather a worry, had in some way to find a connection with the infantile now unconscious and suppressed wish, which then allowed it, though already properly prepared, to “originate” for consciousness.

How far back into childhood do our memories reach?

In other matters no sensible person will behave so irresponsibly or rest content with such feeble grounds for his opinions and for the line he takes. It is only in the highest and most sacred things that he allows himself to do so.