A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist.
— Sigmund Freud
Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.
We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.
A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.
The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.
Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.
The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.
Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.
Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.
Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.
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?'
The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises.
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.
One is very crazy when in love.
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture.
